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First on my to-do list: stop procrastinating. (It is also the second item. And the last.) Next: wash clothes, begin packing for Alaska. Look up Greyhound routes to Pittsburgh airport (have tried, not really getting anything at all; also the Greyhound website is virtually useless), call bloke who might be able to give me a ride on Friday. Decide about snacks. (I think I shall subsist mainly on bread and cheese for meals. Why? Because it is magnificent. Bread and cheese and, er, chocolates.) Decide which books to bring. Oh dear. Make baked goods? Also must hole up at some point and listen to Patrick Wolf's new album, possibly in the book closet with candles. (This is important. Shut up.) And: play with tiny tiny kitten.

Yes yes yes! I have a wee fluffy kitten! Sarah and Hannah's cat just gave birth again last month, and I was promised a kitten, and she was dropped by yesterday. Good heavens, kittens never stop moving -- until suddenly they fall over and sleep for ten minutes without warning. Half the night she was hurling herself around my room, batting at bits of paper and candy wrappers and my shoelaces and the air, jumping here, leaping down again, pouncing hither and thither...


 

 
(both pictures taken by [livejournal.com profile] spockodile, as my camera was then in my father's car. the first one is actually in my old backyard, now the Meholicks' again, a day or two before she came to live with me.) 

So yes. KITTEN. VERY IMPORTANT. Her name is Willow (or Pussy Willow, or Tib -- after the heroic cat in Dodie Smith's The Hundred and One Dalmatians -- or Great Ball o' Fluff -- Mum called her Fluffernutter, which is appropriate as she was a complete nutter last night -- or, hey, Miss Kitty Fantastico; let's hope there's no crossbow lying around), and she has broken our record of only ever having greyscale cats. No, really! First cat, Miss Mistoffelees (Misty for short): white and grey. Second cat, Roscoe: black and white. Third cat, Bartholomew: black. Calico is a very welcome change in the pattern. She is very dainty, but reasonably fierce when she wants to be -- she was accidentally introduced to Bartholomew when she leapt out of my arms and onto his back; they stared at each other for a moment, the air vibrating between them, and then Bartholomew let out some kind of indescribable horrible cat noise and attacked. Willow let out a series of tiny ferocious burblings in turn and fought back in the three seconds before I reached into the fray and attempted to extract her. She kept shrieking and clawing furiously after I had removed her, hissing like a pro (well, she does have big brothers), and clawing my hand to pieces before I finally calmed her down. So, hopefully the cats will come to an agreement soon. It took some time with Roscoe and wee Bartholomew, too. And it's really all on Bartholomew's side -- Willow is a sweet cat (if fierce, like certain of her namesakes), and as soon as Barty Cat, Jr. gets over his Alpha Cat complex, they should be fine. Oh, cats.
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The weather has been glorious these last few days. I haven't shut the window once, and have been basking on the lawn as much as I can. Thought about eating lunch in the park or some such today, but I was far too hungry, and running errands, so mostly I ate my lunch on my bicycle. (It was a loaf of fresh crusty Italian bread I picked up at the supermarket on my way to Other Errands, and there was sharp cheddar in my satchel. I had the bread in my bicycle basket, so I'd just reach in every few minutes and rip a piece off. And no, silly, I did not crash and die.)

Dad and I have been a bit busy preparing for Merlefest, which was the primary reason for my errands today: that, and the weather that was absolutely beckoning to be bicycled in. We're drawing up lists of food to bring and making notes of camping equipment to fetch and fix and purchase, and I am trying to decide which summer dresses are best suited to this festival and the North Carolina sunshine. (I really wanted a parasol, but I started looking too late, and I haven't really found a satisfactory one online yet anyway, and it would probably ship too late to get here by Wednesday evening anyway. Maybe one of the vendors at the festival will sell one. Anyway I'll make sure I have one for Stanfest in July, at least.) Of course I've got to bring trousers... it'll get chilly at night, incomprehensible as that seems now... but I want to wear dresses every day! Packing my thick stockings, and my boots, I suppose. Perhaps it will rain, as it did last year -- I found that magnificent, but I think a lot of soggy people would beg to differ. (I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't had a notebook in my cloth satchel with me, and had to protect it from being waterlogged.)

Anyway, today was Banui's Errands For Merlefest Day: I fetched hair dye -- my roots are growing out something ghastly (and I suddenly recall why I have hated my natural hair colour most of my life; especially at the roots it's a horrid dishwatery blonde-brown-green) -- so I plan to do that tomorrow. Want punk hair for the folk music festival. Er, heh heh heh. And I dropped my borrowed books back at work (and bloody plague, I don't have any hours next week either, which means I miss an entire gorram pay period), and... kind of splurged on some feather jewellery at Claire's? But I have been planning to buy it for Merlefest for months anyway. Anyway, feather earrings! And a hair clip! And a long necklace! No more spending for you now, Banui. Especially not as you wandered into Rue21 to check on the blouses you've been watching for two or three months now, waiting for them to go properly on sale (they're properly on sale when they reach the five-dollars-or-less racks), and... they were. And I bought them. But they are pretty and... no more spending, darling, okay? Good girl.

And this morning I spent gardening with Mum and the siblings -- yes, we're starting a garden for the first time ever! And I find that I quite enjoy it. The rich dark soil feel so lovely between my fingers (how can people manage with gardening gloves?), and even pulling up stubborn ancient weeds was aesthetically enjoyable. We're planting a ring of sunflowers (a "sunflower house") in a little squared-off area near the back patio, and all sorts of other things in the front -- daisies, I know, and I can't remember the rest -- all different sorts and colours of flowers, anyway. And vegetables. And birds, apparently, as we found the remains of one, sans head, tail-feathers sticking straight up, tucked into the dirt at the back of the front garden... Thank you, Bartholomew-cat, but a bird-tree, as delightful as you might find it, is strictly im...plausible.

Ben Sollee's album is beautiful, by the way. I really wish the Sparrow Quartet was playing one of the festivals we're going to this summer; this will be the first summer in two years I haven't seen them. ♥
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Today I put fairy lights up all around my bedroom. I have had no end up trouble getting them to stay up there -- the sticky bits on the backs of the hooks keep coming loose and then strings of lights go tumbling down -- but they look very magical, twinkling up there, especially earlier, in the dusk-light, looking out the window and seeing shadowy clouds behind the one great leafless tree that spreads over the panorama out my window. I love the view out my window: it seems so beautifully arranged, like a picture, the way the tree is positioned, and the Presbyterian church across the street, and the pumpkin patch at the preschool next door. Once I woke to find a brightly coloured bird sitting very visibly in the tree, the tree I want to call my tree although it isn't even in our yard and isn't really all that close to the window, just visible from it from all angles.

Speaking of the view outside, and the pumpkin patch -- Bartholomew, our black cat, has become the pumpkin patch's mascot. Because he is a cat, and a particularly vain one even by cat standards, he has been going over there every day, lurking amidst the pumpkins and curling up by the sign and generally looking as though he's a purposeful part of the display. The preschoolers are apparently in love with him. I was told by the lady selling pumpkins that Bartholomew had caught a mouse in the backyard several days ago and was playing with it, tossing it in the air, as he will do (he is a great scourge of wildlife wherever he lives) -- and a whole flock of wee kidlets were pressed up against the preschool window, watching him with delight. Morbid creatures! This afternoon a little five-year-old girl came running up to me as I was getting the last of Mum's groceries out of the car, her curls bouncing, and presented me with a pumpkin: the lady behind the table, who I believe was the little girl's mother, had painted up a pumpkin for us, beautifully, with Bartholomew licking his paws, and the pumpkin patch, and it said BARTHOLOMEW, THE PUMPKIN PATCH CAT. Which may be the sweetest thing ever, and it is now sitting in a place of honour on the front porch. Of course now the ridiculous cat will only get all the more vain. (I have some pictures of him which I will have to put up soon, once I get one of the pumpkin.) 

Anyway, my bedroom is nearly set to rights -- and also nearly ready to be photographed for you eager lot. My very pretty Victorian-wallpaper message board is on the wall, and while it was bare for quite some time, it is now full of postcards. I got one from [livejournal.com profile] barefoottomboy two days ago, and this morning two from England -- one from [livejournal.com profile] lady_moriel and another from [livejournal.com profile] midenianscholar. So I look cheery and cultured and suchlike, and I love having Reminders of People where I can see them. (I have also stuck up the business card my Future Employer gave me, so that just the half shows that says Waldenbooks on it, because I am silly & sentimental. My job training is in three days!!) 

Today was actually Not A Good Day, mentally. I keep feeling restless and sort of wretched and have to keep making myself busy so I don't feel so listless and wrong-headed. And I have this low feeling of dread or nagging worry or something; the sort of awful feeling you get when there is a Very Bad Thing you cannot change, or something that is about to happen that will be a Very Bad Thing, or something very important you have left undone, not a thing that will be Inconvenient, but a thing that will Hurt. Only I can't find the cause, so I keep trying to be busy instead, because that helps a little. I've been trying to work out causes from all the tangle of messy, barely rational emotion lately -- I am beginning to get a little better at, instead of brooding endlessly about something, or brooding endlessly about nothing, trying to find the reason for the bad-feeling instead, and trying to rationalise it away, or do the thing I left undone that is bothering me so. It works sometimes, anyway. So that is why I put up the lights, and finished my closet organising, and did some straightening about the house, and things.

I do need more posters and things however. Must get to work on that collage for the door, only I haven't actually found any magazines yet. Perhaps I can see if the library will give me any for free.

Oh, also, I have a Thing tomorrow -- a church that our church is sort of affiliated with is having a Halloween Alternative (...yes. two weeks before Halloween. sigh.), and I am singing at it, because this one bloke who does music there was at My First Gig and...kind of likes me a lot, I suppose. So he invited me. I think there may be food, and possibly a bonfire? I am sort of looking forward to it -- celebration of autumnery! -- but also it is one of those things that my brain only barely registers until it is actually happening. Odd how that works. Perhaps it is only my brain. Then again it has only been me recently in the last year or two that has been so botheringly disconnected from nearly everything.
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Well, I'm back -- you know, back, although in the ordinary way I didn't actually go anywhere (except into town, and to several shops, and an ice cream place). Had a really splendid visit with my aunt & cousin, in which much hilarity was shared, and I feel a bit refreshed and a bit terrified because School is looming in front of me like a great dark thing (I like school usually, except for certain bits which I hate vehemently, and I love to learn, but it's all very intimidating, isn't it?), and, you know.


So, that was my week, and a very nice one it's been, too. And now I've got loads and loads of internet to catch up on and I have so many Firefox tabs up that my computer is beginning to smoke at the corners and apparently everyone decided that While I Was Busy was an excellent time to post lots of awesome fic, so. Will attempt to comment on everything important inasmuch as it is my power to do so. Seriously, guys, the fic. It's a conspiracy, it is. (Though even I have been unusually productive lately.)
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Well, it's over. Roscoe died around noon today. We were all with him when he went, touching him and loving him and we knew he was loving us. He's always been an astonishingly loving cat -- even when he could barely stand these last weeks he made a point of coming to sit by the table while we ate dinner every evening. We discovered that last night he crept into each of our bedrooms to sleep for a while -- I know he cuddled with me on the bed for half an hour before he moved to the foot of the bed, then to the floor. He must have known he didn't have another chance and wanted to say goodbye to his family. (He didn't want to be an invalid, either -- after I cuddled with him on my bed for a while this morning, I brought him down to be with everyone else and put him on his favourite chair, the one he and Bart -- mostly he! -- have rent to bits with their claws. He lay there for a while, but after about half an hour, when our backs were turned, he tried to stand up and tumbled limply off the chair. After that, we filled his cardboard box -- he's always loved cardboard boxes, and laundry baskets, and other things he's not even supposed to fit in -- with soft cotton from the chair, as it's all tumbling out the back, and settled him down in there.)

I must have sat with him for three hours -- Mum woke me up at eight this morning to tell me that she thought he didn't have very much longer, and we all gathered around and stroked him, but after everyone else drifted off for a while to attend to general morning needs, I didn't leave -- I couldn't, I suppose. He was always my cat, by and large. He picked me, as we often say. Later Mum and Dad and Timmy and Heidi drifted back (Leandra too, after a while -- she was sleeping upstairs but later she wanted her breakfast so Mum went to get her and brought her down), as he worsened -- started gasping for breath, and twitching every now and then. We stroked him and stroked him; every so often we might stop and he would lift his head to look at us. That would drain all of his strength and he'd flop down into his box again. He loved having us near, I know. I'm so glad -- we're all so glad -- that he died in the morning with his family all around him instead of in the middle of the night, or outside someplace where we mightn't be able to find him for a while (he loved hiding under the house, for one thing). Dad was home, too -- he wasn't supposed to be, but his morning school client called in sick, so he didn't have to go in. We held our darling kitty and loved him and reminisced and wept, and took one last photograph of the family -- Dad, Mum, I, Timmy, Heidi, Leandra, Roscoe, and Bartholomew.

Finally, he started gasping for breath urgently -- that went on for a while. He'd gasp and then subside for a while and then give another great gasp. His legs kept twitching restlessly and spasmatically. He hadn't seemed to be in much pain before then -- he'd just been very solemn and sad, as he'd been for the past several weeks. Grotesquely, tufts of fur fell off in a few places -- his skin was seperating, or something; there was blood and it was horrible. There wasn't very much of this, thank God. We kept feeling for his heartbeat and it kept beating more and more faintly until finally there wasn't anything to feel. Mum had shut his mouth, which kept lolling open as he tried to breathe; Dad shut his eyes; Timmy and Heidi and I each held him one last time, and then we straightened his box and later put a cloth over his body. 

I feel very queer; I'm not quite sure what to make of all of the things going on my head and body just now. As I said, I've never watched anybody close to me -- anybody at all -- die before, and even if he was 'only' an animal, he was a very dear friend of our family, very kind and loving and giving even to the end. He was alert almost to the point of death. He just wanted his family with him. I've never seen death before, and I don't know what to make of it. I feel a bit numb, I suppose -- very, very odd, full of things I don't even know how to put names to. Sort of shaky, and quiet, and pulled into myself a bit, I suppose.

It's a rainy day, the sort I like best. Funny, this would be a beautiful, near-perfect day, I think, if Roscoe hadn't died. Dad took Timmy and Heidi and I to the library a while after lunch (I was hungry and yet I couldn't stomach much, so I had toast and orange juice and felt a little better), and that was nice, even if I can't get anything out that Dad does not charitably check out on his own card for me. I am reading one of my books now, another book by Madeleine L'Engle about life and love and living and God and ourselves. (I wish I could meet her. I feel like I know her, a little, and I think we would like each other. We think the same ways about astonishing little things -- about words, about writing, about love, about art, about God -- so many little things, the little things that turn out to be the big things. There are some writers, you know, whom you love to read, and maybe you live in their books sometimes, and maybe they mean something -- but then there are other writers whose writings are bits of you -- they're writers of your heart and they get into your soul and take roost there gently and irrevocably, and something about them is like being home, except it's a home you didn't know was home and it turns out it's more widely and fully home than the house you're living in, or the last house, or even a succession of houses. I've been feeling a lot of that, lately -- finding vivid familiarity, a sense of having been there before, in unfamiliar places. I'm trying to understand what that means, why it is.) All of the books I got were unfamiliar books by familiar authors, which is nice when one needs comfort -- there's always a risk with a wholly new book. You mightn't like it at all. It might offend you in some way; it might present ideas that are much too alien to the way you see the world. It might even, heaven forbid, turn out to be dull. Unconsciously I think I must approach most books this way. Some authors are like friends, though, and with a new book by an old author, you have both the sense of familiarity and the sense of discovery, which may amount to the best of all worlds.

We also went Mother's Day gift-shopping (what, really, Mum, don't look surprised; you know that's why we were gone so long and why we hid those bags straightaway! :D) and Timmy bought all of us chocolates out of his own pocket, which was incredibly sweet of him, and outside smells like rain and green things and there is still a bit of hope glimmering in the corners of the world. I know this, because when we were driving home in our great hulking monster of a van, the sun broke through a cloud or two and streamed down on the road like a benediction.

I am reading A Circle of Quiet (as I said) and it is exactly the sort of book I need right now -- quiet and reflective and serious and tender and wistful and loving. Bartholomew is very nice to have about, too; I can't imagine if we hadn't got him -- imagine a house with no cats at all! He's curled up in one of my dresser drawers now, being obstinately difficult to see in his blackness until he opens his startlingly golden eyes and regards you with the particular sort of haughty hubris that can only be found in the visage of a cat.

The world is very quiet. It's astonishing and odd and terrifying and fascinating and horrible that there was someone who was alive and breathing and moving this morning and now there is nothing left but a shell of flesh and bone and fur. Another mystery of life and time and death. The world brims with mysteries that cannot be solved or really understood, though they've got to be so commonplace that we don't often remember that they are questions without answers.

I'm glad my bedroom is clean, for once, with the bed made (it had ceased to be a suitable atmosphere for reading; I had to clean it, and I have spent the past three days doing a lot of daydreaming, thinking, listening, and being -- it's been oddly solemn). Outside is grey and also bright; I have the windows flung open and the breeze comes in and wends its way around every now and then. I have pale light coming in the window onto my pillow (I moved my pillow from one end of the bed to the other, so now I wake with the sun on my face, and when I am lying on my back I can see the other window with all the brilliant green of tree curtaining it) and onto my book. The world's shifted position. (A thunderstorm has started; the world out the window is a frightening, manic shade of green. Thunderstorms always seem to me like the world cracking and crumbling and remaking itself over again.) I'm not quite sure what to do about that, but I am feeling as if someday everything's going to be all right.
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I had something witty and brilliant and intelligent that I wanted to say, but I can't remember what it was. (I did make biscuits today--American ones with buttermilk that turned out a bit less fluffy than I think they ought to have but which will taste very good with a bit of sausage and cheese later--but that doesn't make for much of an anecdote as nothing went interestingly wrong. Things often go interestingly wrong when I am baking. I managed to burn a batch of brownies so magnificently once that even the little chocolate chips on top were scorched through, which was really tragic.)

Bartholomew-the-kitten, who is not actually a kitten anymore but an adolescent cat who has apparently discovered girls for the first time, ran off two days ago, not even coming back for dinner, which was a bit worrying as he is not the sort of cat to miss a good dinner, but he finally turned up at the door this morning, noisy and hungry. We think he was chasing the female felines of the neighbourhood. He has been very repentant and purry and cuddly today, but also very noisy. And he keeps crawling into laps when the laps are sitting at tables and the people the laps belong to are having a plate of turkey.

I totally didn't squee publically enough about "The Shakespeare Code", which may or may not have been the best Doctor Who episode ever, and also may or may not have been the best bit of television I've seen in a long time. (I think I might have even liked it better than "Girl in the Fireplace", which means a lot. NEIL GAIMAN LIKED THAT EPISODE.) I mean, it had Shakespearian London. Which was very pretty. The historical episodes are usually magnificently pretty. And it had Harry Potter references and the Doctor quoted Dylan Thomas, which had me wibbling like the fangirl I am. (By the by, that couplet--'do not go gentle into that good night / rage, rage agains the dying of the light'--is tremendously Doctorish, innit?) And Martha, who kept on being pretty awesome. Also, briefly, Ten in an Elizabethan collar, which was nothing short of wonderful. (Wonder if people ever got those caught on doors and things? I mean, I'm always catching my cape on doorknobs and railings because they are in direct alignment with the arm-holes, and often I am innocently going up the stairs when I am yanked back by my renegade cape which has got itself curled round the end of the railing.) I ran around in circles in my bedroom for a while after I finished watching and jumped over stuff for a while.

One of these days I am going to stun all of you with my brilliance and structure and presence of mind. Today is not that day.
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Bartholomew-the-not-quite-kitten has been getting high on catnip lately and rolling about on the floor pawing at a) things which are not there, b) his bit of scratching cardboard, or c) us, not to mention embracing his scratcher and otherwise acting like a kitten whose sense has gone away without leave. This is especially funny as Roscoe, the Alpha Cat, has never been particularly drawn to catnip, although he has been exhibiting kitteny behaviour lately, such as wildly chasing tin-foil balls through the house, and, not satisfied with catching them so easily, sends them flying again, as he goes flying himself.

Speaking of cats, you'd think bagels are safe, right? You would. I mean, we're used to covering food carefully and not leaving it on the table or suffering Dire Consequences if we do (Heidi left a plate of meat in the middle of the table a few weeks ago when she didn't finish eating before we had to visit Mum in the hospital: when we returned, the plate was upside down on a chair, the dinner roll had tumbled onto the floor, and the meat was so very gone that there was a hole through the paper plate), but we don't necessarily worry about protecting our bagels. Well, we got a dozen bagels from Panera (♥!!) when we were in Pittsburgh visiting Leandra yesterday (read Mum's post for more on that), and I had an Asiago cheese one warmed up and sitting on the table whilst I hunted about (futilely, alas) for ham lunchmeat. I heard Bartholomew batting something around, but I didn't pay attention, because he is always batting at something, being a kitten and being curious--but when I finally turned around, there he was with half of my bagel on the floor, nibbling away. I sent him fleeing, and the bagel was saved, but I am still astonished. Cat? Bagel? Really? We do know that he loves cheese, but--really? Bagel

By the by, I'm nearly convinced that this cat is the Doctor in, well...cat form. (Can Time Lords regenerate into cats?) Because, seriously. He is cocky and reckless and also adorable, and, being a cat, is devastatingly intelligent. OMG TEN = ANIMAGUS YAY. 

If he's not the Doctor, maybe he's SIRIUS. I mean, he's black. And cocky. And he exhibits a lot of general Marauder-like traits. Maybe the curtain didn't kill Sirius, it did the next worse thing: turned him into a cat. How embarrassing that would be for Padfoot, you know? :DD
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Dad brought a McGriddle home for me this morning, which is a particular treat as we do not eat out altogether often. He also bought, er, real bacon, rather than turkey. (I settled on the couch with a book to eat my sandwich, and our not-quite-kitten Bartholomew climbed up my chest in a desperate effort to make off with the sausage.) Also in the food department (comfort food is very important, you know): last night I put together a sundae with vanilla ice cream, Oreos, and m&ms, which was very cheering. Ice cream is a fantastic medicine.

I was listening to Vienna Teng while cleaning my bedroom (during my depressed funk in January it became even more of a disaster than usual; piles of clothing and books and papers everywhere); Dad heard it from the hallway and came in to ask what was playing, because it ('Whatever You Want') was very good. :D Vienna Teng, in general, is very theraputic. Quite a lot of her music is soft and warm.

[profile] midenianscholar called, and was comforting and encouraging and diverting by turns, and prayed with me. (She also posted me Switchfoot's newest album, which arrived yesterday morning. ♥ I still haven't had a chance to give it a proper listen yet: I've got to get really deeply acquainted with an album when I'm hearing it for the first time.) 

Last night, when I was feeling fairly awful, I checked my f-list, and was cheered to the point of actually laughing out loud by NEIL GAIMAIN'S JOURNAL OF AWESOME, because, seriously, you cannot read Neil and remain unhappy, especially when he makes a really splendiferous post like this one. The comments to the LJ feed were almost as awesome.

We visited Mum in the hospital this afternoon, and she is doing quite well; resting comfortably, has got plenty of books and more television channels that we've got at home (THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL, which I am vastly envious over). Her blood pressure's gone down some, but the doctors haven't been able to give us any real idea of when they'll let her come home. Heidi (who is nearly seven) is holding up the worst; she's always been very clingy, particularly where Mum is concerned, and she cried miserably when it was time to leave the hospital. Mum's singing her a lullabye over the phone right now.

People from church are bringing us food for the next five days or so: we got a meat and cheese tray + rolls this afternoon (Sunday lunch!), and spaghetti & meatballs dropped off for dinner, along with two loaves of Italian bread (my favourite!), soda, salad, doughnut holes, cookies, apples, oranges, and a Jell-o cake (how many people do they think we are, ten? :D), which seems to be a local phenomenon. It's not nearly as wretched as it sounds: I think it's got Jell-o mix thrown in with a white cake recipe, and there's a thick frosting slathered over the top. I have never, ever seen one of these outside of my particular bit of northwestern Pennsylvania; reckon it's like pumpkin roll and (less pleasingly) 'my hair needs washed' (unfortunately, not quite as only-regional as the others).

You lot? Are amazing. Really. I'm a little too emotional to respond to all of your comments, but, blimey, I love you. I love you all and you mean the universe to me. ♥ (And, um, this icon makes me happy. Yes.)
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I. This is probably the most newsworthy, so I'll get it out now because I am feeling charitable and won't leave you lot hanging in suspense: THE BABY IS A GIRL. !!! Mum had an ultrasound...er, several days ago...and it was, according to her and the doctor, very obvious. I...actually forgot to post about this, which is really rotten and scatterbrained of me, but I didn't get on until late that day, and I posted it on my Xanga, and...here, have a whole barrel of excuses; they're on sale today. Anyway, we are quite excited (except Timmy, who was hoping for a brother to even out the pack, but he's coming around), and Mum and I are already having to resist buying cute baby clothes.

II. Our wee kitten's got a name at last, six days after we got him! The trouble was that Dad and the rest of us couldn't agree on a name, and the poor kitten got called 'kitten' for days until Heidi suggested 'Bartholomew', inspired by the Doctor Seuss books Dad had got out for her recently (Bartholomew and the Oobleck; The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins). I like having a long name for a wee kitty, and somehow it suits him, although we may take to calling him Black Bart as well. (And, you know, we could call him Barty, too, which by a long, long stretch of imagination, logic, and fangirlishness could end up as Ten. Which...has just proved me The Ultimate Fangirl, as I am fangirling for a fandom I'm...not technically in, due to variables I can't, unfortunately, control. I'm going to go hide somewhere now.)

III. On the way out of Goodwill this evening, I spotted a man walking a VERY LARGE BLACK DOG. Sirusly Seriously, it was massive. Says Mum: "Oh, that looks like a Newfoundland." Says I: "OMG IT'S SIRIUS. I TOLD YOU HE LIVES IN OUR TOWN." Mum is oddly silent and not leaping jubilantly or attempting to knock the man down and make a run with the dog.

IV. While in Goodwill (a new one to us in a town we happened to be near), I finally found my winter coat. I have a lovely brown tweed dress coat that is simply crying out for a fierce black umbrella, but I can't wear it out all the time (I nearly ruined it bicycling down the highway on a rainy day; the back was horribly mudspattered and we had to take it to the drycleaners', which was when, um, we sort of totalled the car), and it's bedimmed hard to find a nice short coat. I was looking for a pea coat, but this one was just as lovely. (Yes, I look...ill and disgruntled and sort of mentally questionable in these photographs; they were taken with the ruddy flash on.) Also, the scarf? Was once owned by Sirius Black. You know it. (Can't you see him wearing it while motorbiking through the sky?)

V. I might as well get the clothingspam over with, so, um, here are photograph of me gadding about in a couple of dresses, and looking very much as though I need a shower. (Which I did. I took one afterwards.) Here I am in this rose-covered thing that I would wear to a holiday party if I...had a holiday party to go to. Here is this vintage thing with awesome buttons. And here I am in my pathetic go at dressing conservatively (we went to a different church on Sunday, and I was instructed not to worry anyone with lurid colours, striped stockings, or other things that might jump out as Really, Really Odd). Yes, the preening is on purpose. It's a foppish sort of outfit (or foppish vampire, which was what I looked like the last time I wore it, I think). How is this conservative, you may ask? Well, the colours are vivid but subtle (if you can't tell, the jacket is dark sage and the skirt is royal purple and the boots you can't see are burgundy), and...I'm not wearing the hat.

Going to bed now, I promise.
ontology: (Default)
Suddenly I am hit with an incredibly urgent desire to write a novel about a group of people with basically useless superpowers.

Because, come on, they can't be conveniently awesome all the time. Someone's got to get stuck with 'oh, look, I can lower prices with the blink of an eye!', or 'I CAN TALK TO GOLDFISH OMG'.

Or, there could be a team of superheroes with literary-based powers: 'I am...EXPOSITION MANNN! (Along with my trusty sidekick...APOSTROPHE BOY!)'

Yeah, going to bed now. Kittyspam will insue tomorrow, especially as Mum and Dad's early Christmas present got here the same day as the kitty: they bought themselves a digital camera. Mine is somewhere in Illinois being repaired, but this one is...basically identical, so far as I can tell, except for a few new features and a slightly different layout. (By the by, the wee beastie still hasn't got a name. I looked through Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, of course, but none of the names suit, except for Mr. Mistofolees, and we already had one of those. It was a Miss Mistofolees, commonly known as Misty, but it still counts. Any other (male) cats in literature? Why am I drawing such a blank? [livejournal.com profile] lady_moriel, because I know you will either suggest it or remember to suggest it in two days time while in the shower/in bed/at school/driving/eating breakfast, Tevildo would be AWESOME. Unfortunately, the parents would not get it. Even if I explained it, my dad wouldn't get it. Anyway, kitty's too cute to be evil yet.)
ontology: (Default)
The news of the moment?

We've got a kitten!

My father currently works with special-needs students, and one of his clients' families, I gather, had kittens to get rid of. He brought most of them to the shelter run by a friend's wife, but kept one--he says it's an early Christmas present. I am an absolute girl around cats--I adore them madly, and our little kitten is so bedimmed adorable: I think one would be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't go 'awww!' a little, at least inside, at the sight of him. He is perfectly black, down to his wee little nose; and tiny and soft and very curious and a little bit nervous just now.

Now the real test will be to see how he and our other cat, Roscoe, react to each other. Roscoe is a very mellow and friendly cat (bit of a pushover, really), and this kitty seems awfully quiet and friendly, too--we'll see.


Also, Wordie is the current Best Thing Ever. I am right here, and still sorting out categories, so it's a bit disorganised. But: egad! wordlists! Combining three of my favourite things: words, lists, and community! Squee!!

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