The laundry list

Woke up at 2.

Eddie crying in my room again, but this time he let me pet him for about half an hour.

Could not for the life of me go back to sleep.

Did not want to go to work.  So…. tired….

Another commute to work in the drear rain, which magically transmuted to snow on the hill, and they are doing construction and thus diverted us onto a pathway that appeared to be clay mixed with greasy snow.  Almost fell four times on the way to work, again, the worst slip causing me to pull muscles.  Being diverted into a muck heap almost wrecked my shoes.  Complained to the site supervisor that where we were being forced to walk was a safety hazard, you bastard, have a nice day.

Got to work and everybody is asking me why I’m limping.  I wish I knew.  The last time I limped this much my back crapped out shortly afterward.  The pain in the top of my foot is worse when I walk and better when I climb or descend stairs, which makes NO SENSE to me. Why would flexing the foot hurt less?  The pain is markedly less when I do not wear footgear, which means I should hie me off and spend more money I don’t have on orthotics.  I used to get depressed when I was presented with yet another physical challenge, now I just set my jaw.

In the afternoon, Jeff got me at work and dropped me off at David Lam campus where – I had learned that morning – I was NOT going to get a contact lens fitting from my son but from a total stranger.  I stopped off in the campus bookstore and got Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, and a really cool flashcard book about human anatomy, then went to my appointment and then learned that all the grudgy hopeless feelings melted – all Keith had had to do was say I was his mother, and they swapped things around so that I could get the fitting from him.  Got fitted – it was damned thorough – and walked away with saline and two new contact lenses, which fit great and which I wore for about three hours.  My eyes are a bit gummy today, but not significantly more than they are in the mornings anyway.  As we were commuting back home together I read bits of Homage aloud to Keith and the two of us were killing ourselves laughing, because grim as the subject is (Spanish Civil War), parts of it are screamingly funny.

Then Jeff went to a job interview which went well and he can news about it if he wants to, and then on the way home my cell rang and it was ScaryClown, saying OMG new kitty I’m coming over (reMARkable what getting a new animal does for your social life) as ScaryClown is crazy mad insane for cats and then we watched the 1929 ship around the Horn documentary, with ScaryClown occasionally emitting phrases of stunned appreciation, amusement and awe (JUST as I expected).

Then I cooked pierogies and fed them and then we watched some Robot Chicken including one I hadn’t previously seen, and then I went to bed because I keep having insomnia.  Thankfully, not last night.  Miss Margot slept with me voluntarily last night (she got up to explore in the night and then came back to bed) and I slept until just before six.  So I actually feel like a human being this morning, and my son is showing signs of turning into a professional, and a friend stopped by, and tonight I gotta fetch la Margot to the kitty hospital and get her booster shots.

I hope to go swimming with the folks from Planet Bachelor tonight.  I may feel subpar with all these aches and pains, but I still have to exercise and walking is turning out to be problematic.  I mean, bus drivers are stopping between stops to pick me up, how often does THAT happen?

Oh, and I fixed my hat so it sits on my head better.

Oh, and Katie called me voluntarily and without asking for money.  And she asked me for my opinion about her hair, which is like asking Miss Margot for an interpretive dance on the Berlin Air-lift.  I said, “You’re twenty years old and stunningly gorgeous, do your hair however the hell you like!”  Now that’s what I call solid parental advice.

Katie meets the new beast

I think Katie was a little taken aback at just how flat Miss Margot’s face is, but she was charmed nevertheless.  Jeff, Paul, Keith, Kate and I watched the last two episodes of Planet Earth (in High Def, did I mention that part?) and I fed everybody spaghetti and Jeff bought Mayan Chocolate ice cream and Paul brought pie.  Then I kicked everybody out and Eddie woke me up crying and I went to fetch Miss Margot from the sofa, which was where she was when she decided to roll it up for the night.  She is now snoring gently next to my head, while I wonder why I’ve now had two intensely crappy nights of sleep. I need my beauty sleep (yeah, like about a thousand years) to keep my eyes in good shape for today’s contact lens fitting. I should go to work early cause I’m leaving early….

Ick, it’s pouring rain.

The market collapse

When I was so small I was practically transparent, my father first spoke to me about short selling.  It’s about how you take a bet, preferably with somebody else’s money, that a stock price is going to drop.  The first time pOp explained it to me I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard, expecially since he was explaining it in the context of the 1929 stock market crash.

So this short film by Judd Bagley is a fair commitment of your time at almost half an hour, but I think it’s well done and it helped me understand just what triggered the first round of the collapse.  Mario, a former coworker, forwarded it to me.  Please note it’s Vimeo, which some people have trouble running.

Sometimes governments get it right & more cat interactions

Food in Belo Horizonte

I know that I have taken on a lifelong commitment (hers, not mine) to brush her daily, clean her face daily, bathe her monthly, trim her claws every two weeks as well as shots and the rest of that stuff.  She’s had her daily brushing (mewing piteously but almost silently as I tried to get the willnots off her back end) and Eddie was so concerned that he waited outside the bathroom door until she made her appearance.  Poor guy, he came into my room tonight and cried for a while, then jumped up on the bed and got within a foot of Miss Margot, then casually sauntered away.  But I knew he wasn’t happy, so I picked him up and cuddled him, an activity that usually makes him squirm, but this time he was soaking it up and started purring.  I immediately fed him, but of course the second the feline intake valve known as Miss Margot heard the food hitting the dish, she was in there and Eddie got all pouty and walked away.

Katie’s going to meet her tonight.  I can hardly wait.

I know this is going to sound like I’ve lost my mind, but she is everything I ever wanted in a cat.  She’s going to be high maintenance, but I fell in love with her picture and in real life – snoozing where she drops, negotiating a sticky bit with one of the other cats, falling off a kitchen chair, eviscerating carpets, purring madly while eating oatmeal (oatmeal?), sleeping next to my head, playing quietly for half an hour by herself with one of the cat toys, nibbling on Jeff’s toes in a tentative way, sitting in the empty take-out container, playing noisily by herself with one of the cat toys – she is completely adorable.  While she may not be the Einstein of cats, she’s smart enough to get a sap like me to look after her.  And at 14 weeks she is very, very far away from being the stupidest cat I ever met, so she may have a pedigree like a queen, but she’s not all beauty and no sense.

The single most adorable thing she’s done today is attack a Mac icon on my computer.  When you select a program, the icon bounces up and down a couple of times and this triggered Miss Margot’s I must kill it reflex.

Yesterday I had to get her off the kitchen table half a dozen times. Each time she raced back to the table and continued her explorations, which involved a lot of rustling around in plastic bags that once had meat in them.

This week I get fitted for contact lenses by Keith, yeah! and also Miss Margot gets her boosters, bo0, and I think I need to start paying for cat litter…. we will be going through it faster….

Eddie is expressing dismay

As soon as Eddie saw Miss Margot, he barfed.  I mean, barfed.  It’s emotional barfing in a cat.  As Miss Margot expresses Her Divine Will upon him, he barfs less and less.  He’s now in the meowing piteously stage, all about the interloper who is living in the food dish, occupying the kitchen, wandering at will through the rest of the house (although she has stayed out of two of the older cats’ strongholds), moving swiftly towards the “I will walk by the interloper with my tailing casually waving from side to side’ stage.  Miss Margot’s attitude is definitely, “We can all get along if you just loosen up a bit,” this will probably result in play.

Holy $hit she just climbed onto my mandolin, played a few notes and then wandered back to see me.  Did I mention she’s a tortie?  She does the crazy tortie stuff as well as having her visiting dignitary side.  She will have to be fixed, a prospect that causes me no sadness.  Her entrance into the world was by C-section. Oh, great, now she’s walking up and down on the keyboards. Is she trying to tell me something?   The first time I played something for her on the mandolin she flopped on the bed and attentively watched.  It was like having a cat who was somehow channeling Winston Churchill watching your performance.  Unlike other cats, she does not flee the room when I play.  The breeder mentioned that she loves music but I didn’t figure that could possibly be right.  I’ve never met a cat who showed anything but disinterest in music.

Earlier she was killing the kitchen rugs for the nth time when she made this total ninjaclowncat move and whacked the drawer on the oven with both back feet simultaneously and quite hard, making a beautiful hang drum ringing tone which she immediately popped up to investigate.  Popping up describes her method of appearing on furniture and righting herself when she wants to get mobile from any of her legion of contortionate positions. Twice now she’s climbed my knees, put her face over the top of the laptop and then leaned her two front paws over as well, presenting a LOLcat pic of some charm.

After more rug killing activities, she’s back up on the bed, investigating things.  Liveblogging a new kitten is so much fun.

If somebody had told me when I was thirty that I’d ever pay for a Persian, I would have laughed no end.

Little Miss Margot

She spent the night in the room with me and apart from her noisy eating, didn’t keep me up at all.  She jumped up on the bed and kept me company, and her purr is like the ticking of a watch.

Without getting into all the reasons she had to move households, I think she’ll do fine here.  Now it is time to open the bedroom door and reacquaint her with the boys….

Little Miss Margot is in her new home.

Yes, I have gone sane and added a 14 week old Persian to my life.  She’s on my bed right now, walking up and down, and she just jumped on my knees and is checking out the laptop.  Her little face popping up over the top of the laptop cracked me up.

She magically appears.  The two boys are poleaxed, but already starting to get used to her.

wendy-bird and sheep and other schtuff

Cousin Gerald, may he live forever in song, story, fable and myth, emailed me this.

Last night went to Earl’s for a lavish and well irrigated meal with Katie and Wendy.  Wendy is a friend of Katie’s from the Augur Inn days.

I have injured my left foot and left pinky in two separate incidents so I’m walking really oddly and typing rather slowly,

The final song at the singsong Wednesday night was Pretty Little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green, done English music hall style.  The evening also included The Frozen Lover, a gorgeous creature from Catalonia singing a love song of her own composition in Catalan, Un Canadien Errant, an acoustic version of AC DC’s Ride On, and Bob Bossin singing It’s So Nice not to Be in Nanaimo, which is so much a part of the BC psyche that when Bob was introduced to the then Lt Gov Iona Campagnolo, she SANG it to him, and the whole thing started with Sublime’s version of By the Rivers of Babylon. Oh yeah, and I sang the Merman Lover but next time I’ll do something trad with Choruses, like the Eddystone light, because it’s really a group singing experience and I should go with the group.

Katie protected me from a pickpocket on the 99 bus yesterday.

I turned in a steel and diamond men’s ring on the 135 bus the other day.  The bus driver said it was nice of me and I said, apologetically, “Well you know how it is, somebody was watching me” and he burst out laughing.

I’ve changed my route in to work to shake things up a bit.  I go 25 130 135 instead of 25 Skytrain 145.

I’m off to White Rock for a meal with my new friend on Saturday and off to dinner with Paul and kinder tonight, which means I have to remember to bring my mando.

The clinic didn’t get enough blood, apparently, so I have to go back Saturday morning.  Sunday night Guy the finance dude will be by with some paperwork.  At some point Saturday my two new beds will show up and I will have to rent a truck to get the old bed and a bunch of boxes out of here.  I mean, there’s no point, I’ve sadly realized, to having a queen sized bed if I’m not (this part edited out on advice of counsel) and besides it’s just wrong to be sleeping with a computer, so out it must go, which will be easier if there isn’t a person sized space to fill on one half of the bed.