Here's why I haven't posted in two weeks:

Broken Picture Telephone

...and a very busy time last weekend, when I was preparing (cleaning, decluttering, shopping, buying a light fixture at the very last minute, making a lasagna) for CJ's birthday potluck on Saturday. Oh, I also forgot to mention that I bought him an ice cream cake and decorated it with portraits of our three cats?



It was actually pretty magical, since the day before at work, Dunkin' Donuts sent the office a press kit that included tubes of gel icing in brown, orange, pink, and white. So I only had to go buy black. Thanks, DD! I had visions of cat-headed grandeur in my head, but when I finally started working on the actual gel artistry, I realized how incredibly impossible this goop is to work with. Thus, the cake above, which still got a lot of compliments (though I expect most people were just being polite).

Then CJ's cool friend from Boston stayed the night, so of course we had to go to Green Street and get eggs benedict, then since we were right on Smith campus, we had to walk over to the botanical gardens and take in the bulb show. Then it was time for a Crafternoon (trademarked by me) with some ladies from work. And we really get into making stuff, so I was there pretty much until dinner time. Oh, also, I brought a small "extra" lasagna to the crafternoon, and ate some of it there, along with some cheese and a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting. For dinner I had yet more lasagna, but I did have a small side salad too. Because I like to eat healthy.

And then last night I had a 3-hour meeting of the association I am the chairwoman of, and it was somewhat tense and annoying. And here it is, today, and in 20 minutes I am going to watch the new episode of The Real Housewives of New York City, because I DESERVE it, people.

Happy Holidays y'all!

Last time I was at Ikea I got the cats a basket. They had been sleeping on a folded blanket in front of the fire, but we thought a basket would give them even more off an opportunity for max relaxing and cuteness. We were right -- there's usually one of them in there, sometimes two, and even, a couple of times, all three. The unfortunate downside to the popularity of the basket is that my cats no longer come and sleep with us at night. The basket (and the fire, which comes on intermittently during the night) is too attractive to them. I miss the cats, though -- they were good at keeping me warm, plus they protect me from nightmares.* If I want them to sleep with me, I have to get ready for bed completely, then go down, pick one up, and make it back to bed before the cat starts struggling. Then I have to get into bed before the cat decides to run back downstairs because settling down on top of a cold bed is too much trouble.

Hey, do you know it's Christmastime? True. I have a half-day of work -- really a 2/5 day of work -- tomorrow and then we will attempt to drive to NJ in the slushy rain. Pray for us. I did take a young adult mystery audio book from work that we can listen to, at least.

I went out to lunch (Fitzwilly's) with some co-workers today. I mentioned how I was being dicked around by the airline for our flight to Belize (they keep making it worse and even more inconvenient, which seems like it should be illegal -- I paid for a specific service, and now they're telling me they won't give it to me?) and it turned out that one of my co-worker had been to Belize. She said it was great, but then she kept saying things like, "We took this tiny plane from one town to another, and as soon as we stepped off of it, my four-year-old threw up all over my husband," and "We took a boat out to a snorkeling spot, and we almost died. The water was very rough and the driver of the boat was going very fast, and everyone was yelling at him that we would flip over and that he should slow down. He didn't." She was laughing at all of this, she wasn't being a Debbie Downer, just telling it like it is. It was just so dire sounding that it became a Thing, with people being worried for me -- "Don't drink the water, you know that, right? Did you see 'Into the Wild'? Don't eat any strange berries in the wild, either!"

Anyway. That trip's not for weeks. I have San Diego to cross off the list first. On the docket there: Wild Animal park, a trip to the desert, some free dental care, and maybe a trip to Legoland. I just hope it's warmer there than it is here (it was in the 40s there a week ago).

*Note: Not actually true.

Thanksgiving was a success. There were some food-related mishaps -- the green beans from my garden weren't very good, I had blanched and frozen them, but they were all limp and waterlogged when I tried to cook them; plus, I made the mashed potatoes too early and they got dried out in the oven. But the turkey (cooked by my coworker's husband) was divine, and there were three kinds of stuffing, and homemade cranberry sauce, so that was all good. The ten-year-old boy turned out to be a Lego-maniac, so CJ let him go through this big box of Legos he has for his new office. He kept rustling through it, finding some piece of plastic and yelling 'oh! This is really rare!" And I'd say, all smug in my knowledge, "is that a grappling hook from a snow speeder?" and he'd say "yes, but this is an OLD one! They don't make them like this anymore!" It was kind of mindblowing. I hadn't thought that Legos evolve, and that retired pieces would have value, but apparently they do. It's just another one of those eBay-fueled childhood-completion manias that for some reason I never thought of before.

I spent yesterday being cat-like. I didn't leave the house except for a walk to the bird blind (where I fed some chickadees from my hand) and back, and though I slept in, I ended up back in bed in the afternoon. Warm, cozy bed, with my big plush cat sleeping in it. I curled up around her and played with my iPhone until my eyes got too swimmy and I gave in and napped. Later, B and I finally played the board game version of Halo I got from work. He beat me, but I didn't know what I was doing until halfway through, so now I am itching for a rematch. In sum: Slept too much and frequently, played with birds outside, played inside, ate, and lazed around. It was just fine with me.

I'm feeling less nauseated now. Whew. I felt gross after brunch today, but that is because the Haymarket seems to like their breakfast foods to consist of at least %75 butter, and then, just as an underscore, they put big blobs of butter on top of them. I ordered the "buttermilk pancakes with fruit, almond butter, and maple syrup" but when it came there was only a little fruit, and though I was expecting almond butter (which is peanut butter made with almonds) I think I got butter whipped with almond extract. It was totally delicious, of course, but I felt not so great after. But I have recovered. I think.

Over the weekend someone threw a slice of pizza (or maybe a slice of pizza that had been balled up) onto the big window next to mine. If I raise my eyes above my computer screen I can see the big greasy, saucy, chunky 'splat' and the wide swath that slid downward. Right now it's all extra bright and shiny in the sunlight. People are jerks.

Last night CJ's cat, Voo, woke us up a couple of times, meowing. He's really been ramping up the "talking" lately. CJ has been trying to modify his behavior by spraying him with water every time he meows, but usually the cat meows, CJ jumps up from wherever he is, runs to the spray bottle, runs after the cat, and once he's cornered the cat, sprays him. So I am not at all sure the cat is making the connection. Cats are jerks.

[I'm trying to come up with a short anecdote here that I can end with "I'm a jerk," but I can't think of anything, even though I know I am sometimes jerk-like. Oh wait, here's something.] Parts of my garden are still alive (barely), and when I went to visit it on Saturday, I had two giant zucchinis. So yesterday I made 2 loaves of zucchini bread (just one of my zucchini provided more than the 3 cups of grated stuff the recipe needed) with currants and walnuts. I put half the batter in one of the loaf pans, and mixed chocolate chips in the rest before pouring it into the second pan. There was some leftover chocolate-chippy batter int he bowl, so I poured that atop the first loaf. Sure, some weeks ago CJ had expressed some mild disgust at the idea of putting chocolate into a zucchini bread, but I assumed his reaction was due to the brainwashing he received as a child from his dentist father. I knew he'd come around and revel in the unexpected chocolatey goodness mixed with the currants and walnuts. But, after I told him what I had done, he was crestfallen. It turns out that he just doesn't like chocolate chips in things like muffins and scones and stuff. I told him this was more of a cake, but I don't think I convinced him. I just didn't take him seriously. I'm a jerk.

[Yes, that's the jerkiest thing I can think of. That goes to show how jerky I really am, I guess.]

p.s. My arm feels marginally better. Still hurts, but I no longer think amputation would be a relief. I started reading John Sarno's "Mind-Body Connection" book and I'm trying to believe in it.

p.p.s. I have made a few things to put up on etsy, and I'll link to them here once I get them there.

A few quick things: The cats are getting along well, though there are still minor hissy fights pretty much every day. One of my cats has recently tested positive for a whole mess of allergies, and since removing her from all of the allergins would require suspending her in a vacuum in deep space, I'm going to be starting allergy shots in a week or so. Daily allergy shots. Shots that will make it quite difficult for me to leave home, since I'll have to pay someone to give her the shots while I'm away. The daily shots will go on for four months before we even know if they're working. Then, I think, I get to taper off the shots until she's only getting one every three weeks or so. For the rest of her life. This is with a cat who freaks out at getting a drop of Revolution between her shoulder blades. Pray for me.

And the mattress seems to have relaxed a bit, or maybe we're just used to it -- either way, our bed is nice and cozy now.

I have no doubt that my tomatoes perished at the hands of the septoria leaf spot menace mentioned by a commenter. I probably got a third of the amount of tomatoes I harvested last year. And this septoria crap leaves its evil spores all over the soil, so in order to grow tomatoes in my plot again, I'm going to have to build a raised bed and bring in clean soil from somewhere else. With the money it'll cost me I might be better off buying heirloom tomatoes at the farmers' market. Maybe.

Tomorrow I am sworn in as president of an old-fashioned social association of which I have been to exactly one meeting (and that meeting was for electing people to serve as president, clerk, treasurer, etc.). I've been asked to say a few words about our vision for the association for the next year. I think I'll start with, "my presidency came about as the result of being the slowest one to say 'not it!' at the nominations meeting. [pause for applause] And I promise to continue to keep this association limping along as it has been for years despite the apathy and general laziness of its long-time members!" Then comes the cheering, "Barracuda" played over the sound system, and balloon drop.

Not really. We (me and my vice president, who is actually the Karl Rove and Dick Cheney of my Bush -- in that she has the ideas and the gumption, and I just stand in front of her and give out orders) are hopefully going to do some cool things. Things which you, local reader, may even want to attend. That's our plan, anyway.

CJ thinks I should change my profile at right to read something other than single. But it's accurate! I am not married or divorced. Or widowed.
Tomorrow I go away on vacation for a week, to my Quaker thing with my family in lovely Lake George, NY. CJ is coming for the first time (obviously, since we've been dating less than a year). I think he'll have a good time. He claims to enjoy airplane trips because of all of the time you have to sit and read, so he'll do just fine.
The Park where I live has a communal raspberry patch that's incredibly overgrown. I seem to be the only person to be picking from it this year. I've already gotten a couple of pints' worth, and could have picked even more. I've been freezing them, which reminds me of my grandmother, who had a very tidy row of raspberry bushes and would freeze hers in old Cool Whip containers. (Just thinking about how I used to eat a spoonful of Cool Whip right from the tub makes me gag.)
I finally, finally dusted and vacuumed the house this morning. It had been many weeks -- probably 8? Some disgusting number. The dust kitties were the size of actual cats (and mostly made up of cat hair, too). Luckily, CJ bought the Furminator and went to town on his cat, who now, no joke, looks like he's lost 5 pounds. Unfortunately, my cats don't seem to like it. It is a little intense, true. The cats have been getting along a bit better -- no scary, screaming fights, just the occasional hissy fit.
I won an office raffle (they raffle off the stuff companies send us that we both don't want to put in the magazine and can't donate to the various family shelters we usually give our stuff to) for a SingStar karaoke game! It came with a Rock disk, an 80's hits disk and a Pop disk. Of course I know 100% of the 80s, about 75% of the Pop and maybe 40% of the Rock. It is fun, but a little strange to "play" it alone, or even with CJ, though he gamely did a singing "battle" with me. I need more practice, clearly.
So there's the latest from me. Um, how are you?

What the haps, my friends. I have been sick, but just for the past two or three days. It's a cold. Whatevers. I kind of wish that every cold was different -- like, one time, your skin would turn green, and another time, your toes would really hurt. But instead, it's just the pressure in the ears, the swollen glands, the post-nasal drip, the subsequent coughing and sore throat. Such a snore.
Kitty update! The cats are now mingling 24/7. Voo and Junebug are still fighty sometimes, with the hissing and the sudden, very loud yowling. Junebug is becoming a little bitch, though; earlier today she walked right up to Voo and (silently) whapped him upside the head a couple of times. To his credit, Voo just walked away. He has been kind of a bully over the past couple of weeks, so maybe they just need to be assholes to each other for a while, and then they will build a grudging, mutual respect. Or something. All I know from my own experience is, ignoring bullies doesn't work. (Surprisingly, neither does wincing, pleading, and crying, though I did get a scary girl to take back her promise to "kick my ass after school" because I was such a whiny bitch about it.)
Where was I? Oh yeah, the cats. Junebug has a skin biopsy thing scheduled for Monday, which is not a big deal but will mean she'll be wearing a cone for a few days. And it's hard to be tough with a big ol' cone on your head. She's been licking patches of her fur off and we're trying to figure out what the deal is. It started way before the new cat was on the scene so it's not stress-related.
Look at me, I'm an old lady who talks about her cats! Feedle-dee-dee!

Shizzle, it's been a week since I posted. So, the wedding. I did not end up wearing my dress for the car ride, but I did end up putting it on in the car while CJ drove, once we got close to the destination. It worked out fine. A stranger even came up to me at the reception and said "you have on the best dress here!" I got this dress as a hand-me-down from my sister, so I can't really take the credit. The wedding itself was fine. It and the after-party were in the middle of nowhere, Rhode Island and southeastern Connecticut. Seriously, for such small states, there's sure a lot of nothing inside 'em.
Blogger thinks I spelled "Rhode" wrong. Fuck you, Blogger.
I've been going back to bar trivia again, after a many-months-long hiatus. I'm playing with H and L and without our "ringer" J, who had been useful in filling some of our knowledge holes. CJ has also come for a couple of games. We haven't really gotten close to winning, but that's ok. We bask in the glow of the answers we do get right, and avoid thinking of the money we are not winning.
Anyway, I am too tired to write more. The cats are back to loudly playing at the first hint of dawn (that would be 4:30, by the way) and yet I still stay up past midnight. Dumb. The cats have not met, yet. We may try mingling them this weekend...

So I have a new roommate. Yes, CJ moved in on Sunday, and I haven't kicked him out yet, and he hasn't left in a cloud of anger and disgust yet either. It's good. I firmly believe that we can fit all of his stuff in my house, even if it must be crammed in, Tetris-like. My home is spacious but sorely lacking in closets (and there's no basement, attic, or garage; I couldn't buy a shed even if I wanted one, as it's against the rules here). But I am confident it will work out. I have a smaller ladder-accessible loft that I use very rarely, and that will become our storage area. I would like to figure out a way to block my view of the boxes, but that can happen in time.

Right now the biggest challenge is our cats. Voo, CJ's black male cat, moved into the first floor on Monday (my cats get the upstairs, since they're used to . So far, my (female) cats have sniffed and hissed at Voo through the screen, and sort of batted at him through the tarp. Nobody has freaked out yet, but there have been some growly-type meows. Voo was nervous in his new home at first, but now he's being his old affectionate (to humans) self. Oh yeah, he also meowed ALL NIGHT LONG last night. For no reason at all. He's used to sleeping alone, as CJ (cruelly) has always banished him from the bedroom at night; and my cats were on our bed all night, so I really don't know what Voo's deal was. I asked him, but he had no answer. We are continuing to keep them apart until they get bored with each other. CJ is all into this Feliway idea -- it's this stuff that sends out kitty pheromones that make them think that everything smells like themselves, or something, which makes them feel all is right with the world, and it pretty much sounds like kitty Ecstacy. A Feliway purchase is in our future.

I have a wedding on Saturday that's about 2 hours and 15 minutes from here (in Rhode Island). Should I wear my fancy dress in the car the whole time, or stop at a McDonalds right before we get there and change? I'd rather not arrive all wrinkled, but, well, I'd rather not bring my nice dress into a McDonald's bathroom. What would you do, reader?

P.S. I found my planner! It was in my laptop bag. You would know this already if you followed my Twitter.

Life is busy. CJ is moving in this Sunday, officially (i.e. that's when he's renting the truck), though he prematurely sold his mattress on craigslist last week and so is sleeping here every night. Work is busy, like always, though now we've passed Memorial Day it means we have Summer Fridays, which condenses the work. Which I prefer, anyway. And my neighborhood's tag sale is this Saturday, 8 to noon. Come on by! There are only two tag sales a year here - the other's in September - so they're usually pretty meaty.

And then the weekend after, I have a wedding to go to in Rhode Island and Connecticut (seriously: the ceremony is in RI, and the reception is in CT), for which we got a room to stay the night on Saturday. The weekend after that is open, but the weekend after that one is the fourth of July, and I'll be dog and house-sitting up in beautiful Chesterfield, for my ex-aunt. My sister and her family are coming up for the long weekend and I might even have a little barbecue. I seem to have some sort of mental block for throwing a party; I don't know if I'm too worried that people won't have fun, or won't show up, or if I'm just lazy - probably a mixture of the three. Which is ridiculous. My friends are nice. It's really not much work to go buy some beer and snacks. Come on, lady.

There will not be a good opportunity for having guests at home for at least a few weeks, though. We're separating the two floors of my house with a $20 screen door and a couple of heavy-duty tarps, and it's not going to be pretty. See, CJ has a cat, a solo male (fixed) cat who has shown in the past to not take kindly to other cats. So we are going to try to sequester him on the first floor, and my two kitties on the second, so they can see and smell each other but not truly interact until they stop howling and hissing at each other. Which should happen in a couple of weeks. We hope. Seriously, pray for us.

I have lost my Little Otsu planner, and I am bereft without it. I had written all of my summer Fridays into it, and all of my other future events, so now I have no record of when my hair appointment is and stuff. I have looked everywhere. Every once in a while I'll think something like "Ooh, I know! It's in my other purse!" then I go and look and it's not there. Maybe it's hiding. Or stolen, though it's half-filled-in and not worth much. Consider this post a message to the universe that I want it back. Or, if I wanted to follow The Secret, I could just visualize the planner back in my hands, and that would bring it back to me - like when Luke used The Force to get the lightsaber into his hand when he was hanging upside-down in the ice cave on Hoth. You know.

The River Valley Market (a co-op) opens tomorrow! I am a "member-owner" which just means that I paid them $150, will get my name on their electronic "founding member wall", and will get some discounts on store items. I am hoping this will mean I can afford to shop there (though they claim things will be competitively priced for non-members too). You don't have to do any work to be a member, which is a bonus, and the fee is a one-time thing. The store is about a perfect mile from my house, so I've gotten to watch the entire building go up. It's exciting. In anticipation of doing my grocery shopping at a place so close to my home, I bought these. Of course it's currently too damn cold to consider riding my bike anywhere (I am a wimp), but eventually it will warm up again. Of this I have faith.

And I am going to begin carpooling with my neighbor/coworker, finally. Having another person depending on my punctuality will really help me get my ass in gear, because I hate disappointing people even more than I hate leaving my bed. The past two nights I've gone up to my bedroom area and found both cats waiting on the bed for me. I think the dose of ultra-cuteness makes it harder for me to get out of bed in the morning.

Yes, I am an old lady who talks about her cats, and sleep, and the supermarket. Yes.

It has taken me this long to realize that my shitty, made-in-China, combination pencil holder/paperclip holder/ LCD clock with date/day/temperature readout corporate "gift" may not actually be all that accurate. Besides the obvious problem of it saying today is Sunday (it knows it's April 25) and the fact that the time is fast (it's now a full 10 minutes later than the actual time), it only seems to think that it's either 74.3, 77, or 80 degrees in my cubicle. I thought maybe I wasn't glancing at it often enough, but it slowly dawned on me that I have never seen it be any number in between 74 and 77. So now I have a theory that it has some poor, clunky Celsius-to-Fahrenheit problem, but I can't be bothered to do the research to back me up.

This is what occupies my mind, people. Well, that and my garden; the barely-used bike I bought off of Craigslist for $300 cash (this one); the accessories I might buy for said bike; the recent notice I got in the mail that, although I used "in-plan" doctors, I will owe nearly $1,000 for my recent surgery; Junebug's recent hobby of over-grooming her fur; wondering about the new "noodles" place on Main Street; wanting to sell some stuff on eBay; needing to clean the house; needing a trip to IKEA; and the continuing struggle between my philosophy that paying more for a long-lasting, quality item is worth it in the end, and the deeply-ingrained desire to not spend more than a few dollars on anything, ever. (I had been feeling quite flush when I bought the bike ... and then I got the health care notice.)

Seriously, when is the health care revolution going to come? I have pretty good insurance, subsidized by my employer, and it still sucks ass. They ended up paying about 85 percent of the actual costs of the surgery. That won't be enough coverage if I ever end up staying a few nights in the hospital. What the hell am I supposed to do? And I'm one of the lucky ones! I'm insured! If I didn't love spring and summer so much, I'd move to Canada. But I am always mindful of how much outdoors time we get up here: how many months I can comfortably ride my bike to work, how many months of planting I get, how many months of using the porches... I don't want to tip the indoors-to-outdoors month ratio beyond 50/50, you know?

Sorry, I'm a little obsessive. As you may have noticed.

I'm feeling ok, health-wise. No more lady business to report for a while, I suspect. That's good news for me and for you!

Writing that previous post helped kick my ass, a little. I've been doing a lot more, at least, with the crafts and such. And I'm not staring out the window for quite as long as I did before.
This Saturday I took CJ to a Christmas tree farm to harvest a tree (well, really to watch some guy slice our chosen tree down with a chainsaw). This is his first Christian tree experience, and it's the first one I've been in charge of, so I was pretty excited. CJ was too, and he assisted with all manner of tree acquiring and trimming. He seemed to enjoy the whole affair, especially after I entrusted him with the hanging of the lights on the tree. I put on the Charlie Brown Christmas Special soundtrack, and he drank some eggnog, bemoaning the fact that he didn't have a big blue cable-knit sweater to wear. He did claim that he could feel his foreskin growing back on account of all of his Christmasy participation, so I guess the spirit of the season is truly upon us all.

Here is a thumbnail of the tree, with a cameo by two semi-interested cats (they sniffed the tree with great fervor, but so far haven't batted at a single ornament):



Full size image, a close-up of Junebug, and future photos will be added here. I still need a tree topper, which I'm about to go whip up myself. I was tempted to get something shiny and flashy and cheap at Target, but that's not really my thing. At least, it's not my thing when I have this much free time on my hands.

I need to stop thinking I have to make more ornaments, though. The tree is already fairly full of them, most of which were given to me by my grandmother. She'd give me and my sister one new ornament every year, usually purchased at a church fund-raiser, and this will be the first year I don't get one. The ornaments were better some years than others, and I don't have anything close to 34 ornaments from her here... Either I left them at my parents' house so I can see them on their tree when I visit for Christmas, or I left them at my parents' house because I kind of can't bear to have them in my house at all. I'll miss getting them every year, though. I loved picturing my grandmother at her church's craft fair perusing the folding tables full of weird vaguely-holiday-themed things made of yarn, walnuts, felt, and pinecones, looking for just the right ones to give to me and my sister.

I'd love to do something like that for my niece and nephew, but from what I hear from my sister, they already get way too much stuff from the kids' grandparents. My sister has a small apartment that's already packed to the gills. If I had that much stuff, and was gifted with a whole lot more stuff that I didn't need or ask for, I'd start feeling a little crazy. So out of empathy for my sister and brother-in-law, I've only gotten each kid one gift. I am afraid that this will mean I am losing the gifts arms race with the older members of the family, and the kids will like me less as a result, so I'm very conflicted about this. It would be easy for me to buy/make a lot more stuff for them, because they are adorable and I love them. But I also can't bring myself to add to the problem.

If I were my sister I'd like to think I'd do something radical like this: After the gifts have all been opened, have the kids choose their favorite four or five (because they have already gotten DOZENS of gifts from one set of grandparents alone) and donate the rest to a shelter. (I think I got that idea from AskMetafilter, but Metafilter's been down all morning so I can't link to it. Will edit this post once it comes back up and I can find it.) In reality, this would probably lead to a lot of screaming and whining and crying, and the kids would probably be upset too (see what I did there?). But how else can you stop the madness? Cutting off the supply chain seems impossible: Grandparents are notorious for not listening to their children's pleas for moderation in giftery, and that certainly seems to be playing out here. If I ever have kids, I guess I'll find out how difficult it is for myself.

[Um, it's still Saturday on the west coast.] I've had a very lazy day because of my being under the weather. One significant thing did happen, though: The cats finally discovered the footed wooden bucket-like thing that I bought specifically as a cat bed about a year and a half ago. They have been curled up together in it all day. I could not be prouder.
I also went to Snow Farm for their seconds/samples sale, where I bought nothing, and the Williamsburg general store, where I also bought nothing. CJ cooked me a chicken and heated up some tasty butternut squash soup and a loaf of bread and made a salad. It was very tasty, even though I feel kinda gross at all times due to the cold.
New to this cold: As an experiment, I am going to see if NOT cutting out dairy makes any difference at all. So far it hasn't. I was taught that drinking milk during a cold made you more mucousy, but a few people in the past couple of years have told me that that's bullshit. Please share your thoughts on the matter in the comments below.

I have been keeping this on Twitter, but now I will tell you all: I got a bad poison ivy rash last Sunday (woke up with it on Monday morning) and I've been feeling like a troll ever since. Actually, that's not entirely true: It stopped itching so distractingly after a few days, so by Thursday I felt a lot better. The nasty-looking rash remains, however, and new tiny patches keep appearing. I don't know what to do except keep using the special soaps and creams, and my nightly sacrifice to the gods to deliver me from vegetative Satan. Last week I printed out some photos of poison ivy so I could go hunting for it around the outside of my house. Yesterday I may have found one. I pulled it out using an inside-out baggie as though I were picking up dog shit. And then I scrubbed my hands and arms like in Silkwood and burned everything I had been wearing. Well, not really, but I've done many loads of laundry. I was wearing a pair of leather sneakers when I supposedly got the first bad exposure, and I don't know how to wash them. I am considering throwing them away, which would hurt me and my thrifty nature.

I also did a bit more work on my garden plot, and I am now at full capacity. It's hard to stop! I was thinking of putting in some broccoli and eggplant, but I'd have to dig into virgin soil to get more room. I need to stop.

Random note: If you've got a small spot on your wood floor that needs cleanser, don't use Pledge, unless you'd like to turn that section of floor into an ultra-slippery skating rink. In fact, it would be better to not make the mess in the first place, though that would require going back in time and deciding that after midnight and a couple of drinks isn't the best time for cutting your cat's rear claws. I never thought the bleeding would stop, but miraculously it did, after about ten minutes of horror and guilt...

Oh, I forgot a follow-up to the five superballs I mentioned. I gave one to the cats as a toy -- they loved it; they picked it up and carried it around like dogs, just to drop it and whack it away to skitter across the open floor. I left the other four in a shallow bowl on my dining table. The next day I noticed there were only three in the bowl, but thought I might have lost one myself somehow... Except the day after that, all of the balls were gone. My cats had discovered the superball nest and had routed them out! I was only able to find three (under the fridge and the stove... not easy); the other two seem to have gone back to their home planet. I have one in a cat-proof area and I'm letting them do whatever they'd like to the remaining two. (Whatever they like = losing them underneath something immobile.)