Handsome James was one of three born in Pepper's second litter with The Pirate King of Pleasant Street. Pepper, a dainty seal point Siamese, twice escaped to mate with the one-eyed, ratty-eared brute before my mother finally got her fixed, abandoning dreams of raising purebreads. We know The Pirate King was the father, because every single one of Pepper's many kittens came out looking exactly like him; there wasn't a single thing to suggest their Siamese maternity, except when they opened their mouths to let out the trademark Siamese caterwaul.

I named him Handsome James, because that's exactly what he was; sleek, black, strong, with yellow-green eyes and an affable face. He spent most of his waking hours patrolling the neighborhood, eventually inheriting his father's title by the ancient rite of combat. He likely fathered plenty bastards before he, too, was fixed, almost as an afterthought. He would sometimes disappear for days, only to show up in the backyard with a mouse, smelling of skunk, or with a gash in his ear: trophies from his many escapades.



Sometimes he would march in, eat a can of catfood, promptly vomit it back up again, and march back outside, satisfied. Other times, he'd chase around Annabelle, my mother's chihuahua, or decide that the best place to nap was on top of your sleeping face in bed. Whenever he left the house on one of his many adventures, he would answer my mother in a call-and-response that continued until he disappeared around the corner.

"Here you go, Handesome James." 
"Mrrow!"
"Don't go in the road!"
"Mrrow!"
"Have fun!"
"Mrrow!"
"It's supposed to be cold out tonight!"
"Mrrow!"
"Goodnight!"
"Mrrow!"
"See you later!"
"Mrrow!"
"Okay!"
".....Mrrow!"

He'd been gone for nearly three weeks when my mother found his body underneath our front porch today, already far along the process of rejoining the soil that fed the grass he loved to hide in, stalking voles.

I had worried about how he'd take it when my mother left the house, taking the animals to start a new life. I know he wouldn't have been happy being an indoor cat. He'll always be a part of Pleasant Street, now, his belly always full of fieldmice and his feet on the sun-warmed earth.

I brought Figaro and Eris to the vet today. Eris is two, and it's her first time; she got her first string of vaccinations and we scheduled an appointment for her to get spayed. She's the skittish one with people outside her family (she's also half Siamese), and I expected things to go badly for her at the vet, but she was surprisingly well-behaved and cooperative once the vet figured out she liked being combed. She has a clean bill of health, which isn't a surprise, and is going back in three weeks to have her little ovaries taken out.

Figaro, on the other hand, is one of the most in-control, laid-back cat I've ever met. He travels well, doesn't run from the vacuum, and was hanging out quite happily in the exam room like he owned the place. I explained some of the concerns I have for him (he's eight, and I've had him for five years); a cyst on his neck that's gotten a bit bigger, itchy ears, and a long-term trend of excessive thirst and weakening back legs. The latter are especially a concern, because they're signs of diabetes.

Figaro was taken out by a vet tech for blood work, and when he returned he was in a foul mood, hissing and swiping at the tech. His vaccine boosters were brought in, but he refused to hold still for them, and a pheromone-sprayed towel didn't help. Where Eris had sat still for her injection and nose swipe, Figaro bit, hissed, howled, and struggled.They finally had to bring out a black plastic cone to put over his face to protect the vet from being bitten. It's not that he was scared or upset, he was just thoroughly pissed off. Figaro holds a grudge, and he doesn't take well to being told what to do; in between injection attempts he lustily ate the treats I placed on the table for him, much to the surprise of the vet. For the nose swipe, he had to be wrapped up in a towel like el burrito gato grande, after which he sulked under a bench.

We'll know tomorrow about the results from the bloodwork. We do know that he has a heart murmur that he didn't have a few years ago, which could be a symptom of hyperthyroidism (which may also explain his excessive thirst, muscle loss, and low body weight, even though he has a healthy appetite). Diabetes is still on the table, which would mean daily insulin injections. Hyperthyroidism is also a long-term condition, but would be easier to control (with pills, instead of needles). I'm really worried, and I will be until I find out what's wrong tomorrow. In the meantime, light a candle to the Virgin, to Bastet, or to the Flying Spaghetti Monster for one handsome fellow.

After reading about using marjoram essential oil as aromatherapy for high-strung dogs, I thought I'd investigate the use of essential oils and cats. A quick Google search revealed dozens of articles, but not at all about what I was expecting- apparently, most essential oils are toxic to cats, either in the short or long terms, because of their livers' inability to process phenols in particular! I couldn't find any definitive lists, but there were a lot of testimonies from vets about not using essential oils on or even around cats, because they can build up toxic levels quite easily due to the lack of a liver enzyme most animals have, but cats lack. The cats absorb the oils readily through their skin and inhale the compounds, building up over time to toxic levels. Here's a quote from one site:

It is best to avoid any oil containing phenols: oregano, thyme, cinnamon (cassia), clove, savory, birch, and melaleuca (Tea Tree oil) or ketones: sage. Another group to avoid are the citrus and pine oils: lemon, orange, tangerine, mandarin, grapefruit, lime, bergamot, pine, spruce, and any fir oil.

These are very common oils, and include several that Jeremy and I have been spritzing around the house for the last few months! I tend to prefer essential oil diffusers to incense (because of the smoke), but it seems like I'm going to have to make some sacrifices in the aromatherapy department. I literally just sprayed the living room with a relaxing aromatherapy combination before I had the idea to look up this information, and I feel terrible.

After spending a good amount of time on the internet, I'm convinced this is a legitimate concern and not alarmism. A good site to start with is The Lavender Cat, which has lots of vet testimonials and links. The bottom line seems to be that you should never, ever use essential oils on your cat no matter what the product says, and that even spraying or using them in your home can cause damage in the long term. Has anyone heard anything about this?

(Feel free to skip ahead to the pictures, which are much more exciting).

In a nutshell: I've spent every day for the last two weeks in the lab, until yesterday. Today I'm settled in at home, working on my poster for the AAG meetings in San Francisco next week, and I'm hoping I'll be able to write more frequently from the hotel. The wintery weather that has held us in its dying grasp has finally let go. I didn't get the Evolving Earth grant I applied for. My new schedule at school is from 7:30am-7:00pm, and that seems to be doing the trick. I haven't worked out in a month, but in spite of my stress eating haven't gained any weight back, which isn't as bad as it could be. The urban waterfowl have returned!

(+) I am a spotlight reviewer for David Mitchell's Black Swan Green. (!!!)

(+) The official verdict is that my mysterious blemish was, in fact, a boil (not as bad as it sounds- just an infected hair follicle). David Sedaris had a boil,  which makes me feel infinitely more hip about the experience. After being drained quite painlessly and with minimal gore (by me, and requireing no equiment of any kind), it is now fading into nothingness. This is less exciting, perhaps, than spiders erupting from the back of my hip, but it's probably for the best.

(-) One of the cats (and I'm pretty sure it's Loki, aka Mr. Peepers) is peeing on things he's not supposed to. He pees on the bath mat, so we have to hang it up. He pees on the kitchen rug that sits under the sink (luckily, I hate it anyway). Someone is peeing in the closet on my framepack whenever they get the chance. I love cats, but I never wanted to be one of those people whose houses smell like pee when you come over and visit, but they either don't notice anymore or don't care.

(+) I get to have lunch with brdgt today. She's going to teach me how to knit. She has also agreed, most kindly, to sitting through my free facial session with Lolita, the rubinesque black woman who is a coworker of Jeremy's that happens to do Mary Kay on the side. She cornered us in the grocery store the other day, and I don't know if I can resist her alone. I bribed Bridget and her hubby with the offer of dinner;  the men will have a good laugh at our expense (unless we trick them into getting their faces slathered), we get free facials, and all will be well. I'm broke, anyway, so it's not like I can be tricked into buying anything (though I could really use a nice tea tree oil face wash and some apricot scrub right now).

(-) In half an hour, I take my statistics final exam. As long as I get a 70 or higher I'll get a "B" in the class. You can all rest assured that in the event of a technological apolcalypse, wherein all computers become completely defunct, I will know how to conduct statistical analysed with pencil and paper. I know you were all worried.

(-) Two weeks ago, when I had the gastrointestinal plague, I missed a few birth control pills (or, rather, I failed to keep them down long enough to absorb into my blood stream). As a result, I started my period twelve days ago, and in spite of the fact that I continued with my regular pill cycle, I'm still leaking. This week is supposed to be when I get a "letter from Genevieve," as my friend Megan and I used to say in high school, so I suppose I can expect another five or six days of this. Part of me wonders if I should mention something to my gynecologist, because this seems a little excessive.

(-) Speaking of which, I managed to schedule my follow-up pap for the HPV/cervical cancer test this Friday, which will be smack dab in the middle of the "crimson tide." I have a knack for scheduling these things on the wrong day, which comes from having to schedule them three months in advance. Someone should write me a computer program that will inform me of where I'll be in my pill cycle on any given day so I can plan accordingly.

(-) Figaro is not getting along with Jeremy's cats. Eris is in heat for the first time. Between the "mmmmmrrrrraaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrooooowwww's" and the "prrrrrrrow! marrrrrow's" (respectively), I haven't slept much lately. Jeremy has been surprisingly kind about the fact that my two cats are depriving us of rest, especially considering that (due to the twelve-day leakage following the plague) I haven't been able to perform my wifely duties in a while.

(-) I broke up a fight between Figaro and Loki yesterday, only to have Figaro bite me through the skin. My entire left arm hurts more than most things, and I can't turn it without tear-inducing pain. The cause of this misery? One tiny whole the size of three pinheads. Not exactly a sympathy-encouraging wound. It's covered by a Sesame Street Band-Aid, which doesn't exactly encourage people to take it seriously.

(-) I still have two short papers, a term paper, a lab report, and two labs to turn in by the end of the week. I also have a pile of term papers I'm grading for Geography 170, "Map Reading & Interpretation." I'm getting paid $12/hour (+), but man is it tedious. Apparantly it's possible to go through four years of higher education and write a typo-ridden ten-page paper that doesn't cite any sources. It's supposed to be an intro-level course, but most people taking it are seniors looking for an "easy science requirement."

(-) I'm behind on both my reviewing and my reading for my 50 Book Challenge goals. Luckily, I'll be traveling a lot this summer, and will hopefully catch up.*

(+) I'm really not so very grumpy, considering.



* (Don't forget to give me your address if you want to be on my postcard mailing list for the summer!).

brdgt and I had our third breakfast at Sunroom this morning, an upstairs affair off of State Street that, in spite of its very good food and very low breakfast prices and its proximity to campus, seems to keep a pleasant clientele of mostly grad students and faculty. We talked about tuberculosis, clogs, surprising sources of Vermont pride in Wisconsin, Madison's terrible lack of good-bad Chinese food, and the joys of exposing the men in our lives to new food. She gave hers spinach, and I got mine to eat okra. There was tea (a smokey, exotic lapsang souchong that it might have been too early for) and $2.45 toast-eggs-n-taters, with organic, free range eggs. As the counter gal said, "Where else in the world can you find this?" I bit my tongue, instead of replying "Vermont!" No one likes that person.

***

Eris has a new favorite toy, which also happens to be her favorite snack. When I was making fresh green beans the other day (two weeks until the farmer's market returns!), One of the snapped-off ends bounced out of the sink and onto the floor. She batted its stemmed end around for a bit, before chewing on it. Eris chews on just about anything with a firm and slightly yeilding texture, including the power adapter for my cell phone, which she's chewed straight through twice now. Once she started chewing, however, she shifted quickly into eating, and now whenever I see her acting restless I say, "Baby Eris, want a green bean!?, and she comes running. The ritual continues; bat, swipe, bat, chase, swipe, spin, kick, swipe, spin, chew chew chew chew chew. I'd rather she ate lettuce and green beans than King Robert's nose stuffing; she's managed to decimate my stuffed boar's nose during one of their romps. At least Baby Pingy still has its other felt foot.

***

Statistics Exam #2, Take #2 happens tomorrow at 9:30. I've been studying for it for most of the day, and have felt a lovely weight lifting as I settle into the material. The first one I retook got a 90.5, which I'd be much more proud of if it weren't the second semester I've had to do it. Essentially, my lab grade from stats for last fall was a 98, but my exam average was...not so great. I need to maintain a B average for my funding and to stay in grad school at all since I wasn't a Geography undergrad, so I was a bit worried. I know the material, it was just the sit-down-pencil-and-paper-timed-exam bit. Silly progressive undergraduate colleges. Anyhow, I've been vindicated with my first re-take, (the instructor gave me an incomplete and I'm retaking the exams), and tomorrow we've got numero dos. Never mind that I'll never do a four-way ANOVA with pencil and paper in the real world. Never mind that, even if all technology disintigrated overnight and I actually HAD to, I wouldn't also have access to books and such to look up the formulae without computers. Come the apocalypse, Jacquelyn will be able to calculate statistical significance, never fear.

Speaking of which, off I go.

As I sat in my Vegetation Dynamics lab this morning (don't worry, I have no intention of waxing about age-depth models and dissimilarity coefficients, though you get a cookie if you know what those are), I had a devestating revelation. It's almost too sad to put into words, really, though I'm sure some people will get an "I told you so!" satisfaction from my misery.

My iBook is effectively useless when it comes to most of the graduate work I need to be doing.

Keep in mind that this is from a very particular perspective, slightly exaggerated for dramatic effect. I love my iBook with all my heart; having made the switch a year and a half ago, I have been exceptionally content since. The interface is so much more intuitive and user-friendly, I don't have to worry about viruses (there are no viruses for the OSX operating system), popups are rare and ad-ware nonexistant. Everthing is plug-n-play and drag-n-drop. Nothing crashes. The function keys actually do something. When the little apple lights up, my heart swells with joy. However, given all of its superiority, my iBook has a small problem. In fact, it's not even the iBook's problem; rather, we are the victim of discrimination, of technoism! The problem is precisely this: most of the programs near and dear to my newly-educated heart are simply not made for Macintosh. No SigmaPlot, Systat, SPLUS, SPSS. Endnote apparantly crashes the Mac version of Word. This is a serious issue, because I really ought to be using Endnote and I certainly use SigmaPlot and SPLUS on a regular basis. My heart is torn, and the path ahead of me is unclear. I need these statistical and graphing programs for my research. I refuse to make the switch back to a PC. My hope is that, with Apple's recent successes and the addition of Intel processors to its new line will increase the rate at which the rest of the world becomes assimilated. One can hope. Perhaps I should extend my letter-writing and phone campaign to include the producers of various software packages?

***

I decided to punish mysef for taking last weekend off by signing up for the Geography Student Symposium. This involves my giving a fifteen-minute presentation on my very underdeveloped research. My (new to the department) advisor informed me that this would be a perfectly acceptable venue for showing my work to a peer group. A quick scan of the other abstracts reveals that everyone else sems to be much farther along in their work than I am, but at least it's something to throw on the ol' curriculum vitae. So, in two weeks time, I shall be expounding on the virtues of coprophilous fungi. That's a fancy way of saying "mushrooms who love poop." Jeremy thinks it's hilarious that my research is about mammoth poo. I maintain that anything becomes infinitely cooler by throwing the word "paleo" onto it. Example: there is a woman at UM-Orono who works on the diet of Southwest Indians, by means of paleofeces. Paleofeces sounds way cooler than "crap," which is essentially the same thing, but not as old. And you need degrees to study this! Amazing!

***

My landlord has an apartment showing this afternoon, so I went home to do the dishes and make my bed, which Eris will have mussed by now because she's a bit of a burrower. Making the bed with her around is always an adventure, because she considers it to be a task designed entirely for her amusement. She loves chasing the blankets as I spread them out, attacking my hands as I try to smooth the wrinkles and folds, and leaping underneath the settling fabric, which she then attacks. Whenever a stranger comes to the house, she burrows underneath the covers of the made bed, often startling people who come into the bedroom. This is merely one of her many hobbies, which include curling up in the bathroom sink and meowing at me while I make the paleofeces of the future, wrestling with King Robert the Stuffed Boar who is Much Bigger than she is, and attacking the speakers whenver I put a CD in the stereo. Her latest trick exceeds them all, however. Somehow or other, Eris and I have taught one another to play fetch. She co-opted a small stuffed penguin chick that x_pyewacket_x brought me from the New England Aquarium, and after chewing one of its feet off and repeatedly killing-it-dead, made an incredible discovery: If Jacquelyn throws Baby Pingy into the other room, and Eris brings it back, Jacquelyn will throw it again! This cycle repeats until Jacquelyn's arm is sore or Figaro gets up to see what all the fuss is about and breaks Eris' concentration. The other night, the game lasted half an hour. Last night, it went on intermittently for almost forty-five minutes. I need one of those ball-launchers that baseball players use.

***

Another sure sign of spring today; there are tiny little peeping bits of green in the corner garden outside my front door. Crocuses, tuplips, or daffodils? We'll see...Now all I need are some Girl Scout cookies, and it's on. In Vermont the Girl Scouts would set up shop outside grocery stores, or their relatives would sell them at their businesses, with large letters painted on the store front glass in angled, increasingly smaller letters. In Maine the various faculty at COA would duke it out over campus e-mail to get the most buyers. I haven't seen any Girl Scouts come through Madison, and I don't know where to go to find them. I've never had to stress so much over potential Thin Mints! Do the Girl Scouts have a website? Is Madison too liberal for organized cookie-dealing? Is there a hotline?

It's the little things, you know.

I, the hungry but distracted scientist, finally sat down to make a wholesome dinner of tomato soup and salad when it occurred to me that Eris had been crying piteously for the last five minutes or so. She's a talkative half-Siamese, and I've learned to tune her out when I'm doing something essential, like school work, but in this case she was acting very restless, crying and running after nothing, or staring at me as though she were trying very hard to tell me something. She kept leaping up on top of the 'fridge and then to the cabinets, staring at me from behind the green glass of the wine bottles, as though there were an important clue I was overlooking. It felt like I was in Purgatory with Lassie. She wasn't placated with attention, or riding along my shoulders, or a handful of treats. I sat down with my newly-made dinner, and she spied me from the top of the cabinet, leapt down to the floor, up to my desk, and snatched a leaf of red lettuce from my bowl. She munched happliy in silence, leapt up, grabbed another one, and took a few more nibbles before deciding she didn't want it, so she jumped back on the desk with it in her mouth and left it next to my bowl.

Now she's sitting on a chair licking in between her legs profusely. She's only five months old, but I think my little baby is becoming a woman.

Ye shall now rejoice, sayeth the Lord, for it is 57 degrees outside and rising. There is even the threat of thunderstorms (possibly severe) and hail, to which I reply, "bring it on!" The projected high for the day has changed three times since I woke up this morning, and is in the low 60's now. The forcast calls for colder temperatures mid-week, but how can that be, when the birds are singing so sassily outside, and the sky is a startling blue?

I took the morning off to get some dishes washed, and then I'll pack a lunch and spend this lovely day indoors. I'm not sure what spring looks like in Wisconsin; in New England, I knew all the cues. Crocuses poking through the snow, the first robin with its proud barrel-chest, and the wet, sucking smell of the ground-thaw. How does spring come to the prairie?

One undeniable sign of spring is Figaro's frantic interest in the windows in the wee grey hours of morning. When the birdsong starts every year after that long, cold quiet, he takes a very sudden interest in the goings-on outside. Both he and Eris have been beside themselves with the little flock of sparrows that lives in the small tree on the sidewalk by the old-folks-tower. They shift back and forth across the street, and their sudden noise outside my bedroom window drives the cats into a fit of wild feline predation.

As for me, I can't wait to sleep outside again.

Remember Eris, the rubber-band-eating kitten that Jeremy got me for my birthday last December (and the reason for my sustained January poverty)? She's doing wonderfully, and has had no major incidents of eating inappropriate things. She does seem to like chewing plastic bags, however, and I woke up to a rustling noise this morning and found her INSIDE the plastic wrapper that had covered a 4-pack of toilet paper. I'd put it in the trash, and she'd pulled it out and was nosing in it. I'm now super paranoid about her suffocating herself. She loves nosing around in things, blankets especially, and burrows around in the blankets like a little mole.

We think she's the reincarnation of Julia Child. Whenever I'm in the kitchen, she wails pitifully at me (even when I've just fed her, so it's not a cry for food) until I pick her up and let her settle on my shoulders. As soon as she can see what's happening on the counter above (stirring, chopping, washing) she happily watches my every move until she gets bored and jumps down. She also has an unnatural (for cats) enjoyment of just about any food she can sneak a bite out of. I've caught her lapping spicy green salsa, licking a plate of goat cheese, drinking my Earl Grey tea, and stealing slices of tofurky off of my sandwiches. She doesn't seem to share Figaro's love of pasta with marinara, however. And she refuses to eat cat treats.

She loves laundry. Her favorite game is pulling down the newly hung clothes by leaping up and attaching herself to them until they fall down. She chases the arms and legs of the shirts and pants, and loves to climb in the clean clothes bucket and nuzzle the warm, fresh items as I pull them out.

I had to move my stereo off the floor, because she attacks the speakers when sound comes out (and with my computer, too - she'll bat at the little round holes on my iBook when music is playing). She snuggles up against (and partly on) my computer when I type, and sits on the toilet and cries while I'm in the shower. If I'm standing up and she wants to be held or on my shoulders (and I'm ignoring her pleas), she'll leap up and latch onto my pants and climb up as if I were a tree. I have small red pinpricks in my skin all over my body, and they look like braille on my hips.

And so, without further ado, here all hail Eris! (And yes, Figaro is doing quite well himself!)

Eris in her demonic aspect:


Eris bestowing me with her scent:

I was at school for 13 hours yesterday, from the beginning of my 8am class to the time I turned in my Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics lab at 9pm. All those hours in between? Writing, class, computer statistics, and reading papers. I am behind on my research work because of my painfully heavy course load this semester, and my dishes need doing in the worst way (not the afore-mentioned pancake and curry dishes, but the subsequent bean soup dishes).

I got home last night to find that Figaro had peed on my bathmat, which he'd threatened to do yesterday morning if I didn't change the litterbox. I had no litter until last night, which I patiently explained to him, but I also told him I wouldn't get mad if he used a dirty towel that I put out for him for that express purpose, because I was being a bad friend by not providing a pleasant body waste disposal environment. He left the towel alone (which is good, because it was Jeremy's anyway) and used the bath mat instead, sadly. But at least he was polite about it and flipped it over onto itself.

I went to the University Bookstore to pick up a hand lens and a utility knife for my wood course, and as I walked by the calendars (40% off) I was lamenting that I never picked up my Edward Gorey Page-a-Day calendar before I left Borders. All the remaining stock were subjects like Martha Stewart, coffee, air force jets, and Mom propaganda, and I was terribly depressed. I was just about to give up hope when, amongst the hot air ballons, nurse jokes, and human-rights-violations-a-day calendars, I saw one box of my 2006 dream calendar! And now, every day, my desk at school greats me with the black-and-white drollness of Edward Gorey.

This might not be a good thing. I'd better be careful, else I end up like this:


"Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin."

Eris ate my jade plant.

She has shown no interest in the succulent since her arrival here about a month ago (she's getting so big, it's hard to remember what a tiny thing she was), but apparantly she knew my fondness for it, because over the weekend she decided that to punish me for my absense she would destroy my lovely, lovely jade. I've found leaves with tiny razor-teeth marks all over the house in various states of withering, and nearly every leaf left has neat little rows of puncture marks as well.

I spent the weekend at Jeremy's, enjoying a few days of complete uselessness before the semester starts tomorrow. At eight o'clock in the morning, in fact, which seems a bit suicidal on the part of both the students taking the course and the instructor teaching it, considering enrollment is likely to be on the lowish side. He happens to be my advisor, however, so I have no such luxury. Last I knew there were six signed up, and I know for a fact that half of those are his advisees.

My weekend was just what I needed; comfort food and lots of couch-lounging. I made vegetarian chili dogs last night, Jeremy made waffles this morning, and we watched Titanic on Friday night. He'd never seen it, so we rented it from the library. Since everyone else in the Universe has seen Titanic, there's really no need to go into further detail. What surprised me was that Ethan (ten) and Benjamin (Jeremy's room-mate Brian's six-year-old son) stayed up through the whole film and were completely engaged throughout. I was expecting them to fall asleep, or get bored with the romantic plot line, but they held on through the bitter end.

It's becoming odd to make the transition between these two worlds; a batchelor pad with two young boys and a big screen television one day, and hardwood floors, an air mattress, and my cats the next. I was a little sad to leave, to be honest, though I'm secretly looking forward to starting the semester and getting back into a routine. I'd like to keep the Jeremy-and-Ethan part, though.

Naming the kitten Eris after the Greek goddess of strife and chaos (though I was inspired more by the Discordian interpretation) seems to have conjured her essence. The little kitten, who has already received her first nickname - "Wee Princess Fox Face"- kept me up all night Wednesday and Thursday, crying and wandering the house, and would not be consoled. Thursday morning at six, she was finally huddled at the bottom of my sleeping bag, and suddenly ran out onto my chest, heart racing, and vomited into my hands. When I looked at the conents, I was shocked to see a pile of rubber bands, some small pieces of plastic, and bits of what looked like a bromelliad. As I own neither a) rubber bands or b) a plant that matches, I concluded that Baby Eris had been worrying a tummy full of rubber bands for at least two days. She continued throwing up every so often, and I finally took her to the emergency vet, where we discovered with an x-ray that the kitten had a bowel obstruction that probably passed to the colon and would likely be expelled, but because the kitten was so dehydrated from vomiting they needed to keep her overnight with IV fluids. We picked her up the next afternoon (and the corresponding $402 bill) and brought her home, where she finally expelled a very un-kitten-like poop. She is now doing wonderfully, is getting along smashingly with Figaro (though they're not at the cuddle stage just yet), and is doing everything a wee kitten should.

Some photos (bad, off my cell phone):

( Kitties! )

In other news...don't ask. It's all retail hell, and while I could go into detail about customers who think we really sell nose-hair trimmers, or change artist scams, or people who come in at the last minute with lists they don't understand and demand that you hand them everything that will make their family happy, wrapped, and at a considerable discount (and with no standing in line involved)...well, it's my birthday, and I'd rather shake my boo-tay instead.

Last night, before work, I made oatmeal raisin cookies, and then when I got home I finally filled out my holiday cards. That last-minute vet charge has decimated my finances, and with it has gone my hopes for a holiday season. I had to return a $6 bottle of fabric softener (an accidental purchase from a few months ago) to the grocery store to get a credit so I could eat lunch over at work the weekend. Yesterday, I wrote a check at the local super-cheap grocery store that my account won't be able to accommodate until Friday, so I could have groceries and a little cash to buy my holiday cards and stamps. Luckily, said grocery store takes its sweet time depositing checks, but I still feel extremely white trash.

So:

1) I will concentrate very hard on not thinking about the fact that I have not heard from either of my parents yet, either through the mail or on the phone.

2) I will study for my last final, which is tomorrow, and which will signify the end of my first semester of grad school, surely an accomplishment as I've made it through with all my limbs and at least some of my enthusiasm.

3) I will enjoy this day even if kiwikat and I have to spend it alone, making curry, and playing shot-glass chess, which is a two-person game anyway.

4) I will pretend that my birthday is the last day of the month, and tomorrow it is January, and I don't have to think about the Christmas That Wasn't.

Stay tuned for fabulous musings on the winter solstice, exciting news about the radiocarbon date we got back from the Appleman Lake core, heartbreaking and intimate reveleations about birthdays and holidays spent Alone, and enough stupid customer anecdotes to fill volumes (hm...a get-rich-quick scheme?).

It's been snowing heavily since early this morning. I've been steadily getting work done, at school and at home, though I haven't spent any time in the lab this week. As I'm not getting graded on "lab," I'm not going to spend too much time feeling badly about it. The next two weeks, sans classes, will give me plenty of time to be productive and sexy in a navy blue labcoat. I'm thinking of getting my own, and sewing silly patches on it. With $3.45 in the ol' bank account that won't be happening any time soon. This loan is taking much longer than I'd anticipated to come through. Mercury was in retrograde, I forgot the appropriate sacrifices to the appropriate patron deities of college poverty, etc.

I am a bit distracted, stretched. Jeremy and I have been on opposite schedules for a long time, though we'll get to spend some time together this weekend. I didn't sleep last night; Eris (as we've christened the little kittling) spent the night running about, hiding in corners, and mewling at the top of her little lungs all night. Finally, around five-thirty, I was holding her in bed and trying to comfort her enough so that she'd sleep a little (and let me sleep). Figaro sauntered in to use the litterbox in the bathroom, and as soon as he started scratching the kitten wriggled out of my hands, ran over to him, and gave the tiniest little "hiss!" Then, for the next five minutes, they proceeded thusly: "HISS!" "hiss!" "HISS!" "hiss!" "HISS!" "hiss!" "HISS!" "hiss!" Finally sick of the game, Figaro gave a low "grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooouuuuuu" and the kitten came scampering back into the bedroom and wriggled into the bottom of the sleeping bag and didn't come out until Jeremy woke up from his daysleeping at five o'clock. Now she's being extremely cute on one of my hospital waiting room chairs (the cream-colored one I really like, with a tiny waffle texturing all over it and wooden arms and legs). When she lays down she won't sit still, but rather scoots all around whatever she's sitting on until she falls asleep. I think she hasn't completely figured out her body yet. She's definitely got the claws part down, though.

Figaro has spent the last twenty-four hours sleeping on top of the refridgerator in protest.

A long night tonight, working on the final draft of my term paper. Then, tomorrow, class and more work, and then Borders from four to 11:30. Then a little holiday party with the Borders girls ("I still have no idea what I'm going to bring to the $10 gift swap," she thinks as she looks around frantically for something that might work...everyone likes three-hole-punches, right?). It's cold in my apartment, but I've got Earl Grey to keep me warm. His mustache tickles, though.

When I came home from school today (I should just start calling it work, 'cause that's what it is, really) I arrived to something out of a dream: Jeremy had cleaned my house, somehow gotten the winter mud off the floor without a mop, somehow gotten the mud off my boots from when I'd taken that sediment column out of the buried bog a month ago (they were completely covered in stiff, frozen glacial mud and had been sitting on the porch), did my dishes, and...

...got me a kitten for my birthday! As soon as I got in he sat me down in a chair and blindfolded me with his scarf, and placed the tiny, warm bundle on my lap. She's a lovely, lovely thing- her mother is a blue point Siamese and her father was an orange tabby, so she has the soft grey coloring and markings of a Siamese (and that caterwaul I love so much) but the faintest hint of stripes on her body, with more pronounced ones along her tail. She looks like a newborn Bengal tiger, with a regal little face and large, dark grey ears. She needs a proper royal name, a goddess' name, but Isis isn't quite right and Lillith isn't regal enough. I've been researching various names online when I really should be doing homework. Meanwhile, Figaro is quite miffed, but is coming around more quickly than I'd feared. My plans to get him a kitten were really just that - for him. He needs someone to keep him company when I'm at school, and to encourage him to play so he doesn't become a curmudgeon at the age of six. I will post pictures as soon as I can get batteries in my camera and get the pictures out.

Honestly, should I be waiting for the shoe to drop? At what point do I figure out Jeremy's a serial killer, or come home early to find him in bed with the Laker Girls? I'm not used to this. We'll be together four months next Tuesday, which is still within that euphoric phase where each person is constantly feeling inspired to do something sweet for the other. I have a feeling that with Jeremy, it's not a tactic, or a whim - there's something genuinely giving in his personality. This will take some getting used to. I'm honestly a bit floored, really. Letting him leave for work tonight was harder than usual, for some reason. We spent a night together on my new air mattress (a rare thing when you're dating someone who works the night shift), and I'd forgotten how nice it is to tangle with someone and sleep through the night in that safe-feeling knot. I can't remember the last time a man made me feel as safe and as feminine as he does- and at the same time, I can be strong and independent, and he doesn't resent it. This is a good thing.

Edit Also, lots of thanks to kiwikat for her assistance in bringing the kitten from wherever she came from to my apartment. She is a good friend, which is also a good thing.

The best part of the day happened shortly after it began. I woke up several times in the night, always looking at the clock to check the time. At two I gave a small sigh of frustrated disappointment, and at six-thirty a sleepy squeal of delight: Jeremy was due to stop by sometime after eight. When I went to let him in, yawning and grinning like a fool, I realized how dear these moments are becoming to me, when we cross paths at the end of my day and the beginning of his, or vice-versa. He brought me a belgian waffle with fresh strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast, a gesture in reference to a conversation we'd had months ago when we first met. He remembers things, it seems. I had that suspicion, of course. He seemed like the remembering kind. To me, there is no greater intimacy than memory- to be heard in a way that stays.

I worked in the bookstore for most of the day, which passed without incident. I've felt slightly tired and detached today, like I'm coming down with a cold. All day I've looked forward to coming home to my latest Netflix selectin- A Very Long Engagement- and in anticipation I stopped at Whole Foods and got black cherry spritzer, popping corn, and some nutritional yeast. The tiny complication, however, is that I cannot seem to find the DVD. I have The Name of the Rose, which I watched last night, safely tucked away in its envelope to go out tomorrow. Tonight's selection, however, is nowhere to be found. This is nothing short of a minor miracle in that I have no furniture- the places for a DVD to lose itself are extremely limited. Few things mean so much to me as when someone remembers- conversely, few things frustrate me so much as losing something. My attempts at entertaining and distracting my lonely little self (like my repeated attempts to see The Penguin Movie) have been thwarted. I am suspicious of voodoo dolls and the Eye. I am preparing to go through the bottom of my closet, which is covered in dirty laundry, because it's the only place I haven't looked yet.

Lonely. Is that accurate? I am not unhappy- in spite of my unprepared popcorn I am in fact more content in general than I have been in a long time. I am in a new relationship, imbued with the energy of new lovers and marked with the intimacy and comfort of old. I am grateful for this quiet moment (sans DVD though it may be), and not at all craving large crowds or social interaction. In all honesty I really just want to go to sleep.

I just want someone in the bed beside me when I do.

I am trying to reconcile myself to the fact that the best place for my cat right now is in Vermont, where he has three stories to explore and can play Fierce Predator In the Tall Grass to his heart's content. He has a chihuahua and a Siamese to terrorize. My mother feeds him tuna, and has finally figured out how to tell when he wants water and when he wants love. I think he gets affection fairly often, too. I couldn't possibly take him away from that, to lock him in a small apartment where he'll be alone most of the day and without the outdoors he's now so fond of. In spite of the logic behind all of this, I love him like he were my baby, and my heart is just the wee-est bit broken to be away from him. Sometimes I get Jeremy to spoon with, which is lovely, but I still miss Captain SillyWhiskers. He has more charisma in his bushy tail than a dozen cats put together. He has a fondness for pasta with marinara, knocks over water glasses on a regular basis, runs like a pony when he's happy, and has an extend-o-matic neck that allows him to reach high cabinets in a single bound. Jeremy has suggested I get a couple of kittens, but I would feel so disloyal, like he were being replaced. He's my Handesome Fellow, and there is a hole in my little heart without him.