updating my life... again

so, lately, the cats have taken to playing in the cat carriers. no really. i'm not kidding. they'll chase each other in there, bat at each other through the bars on front, and generally treat the carriers as a personal jungle gym. they've been doing it for months now. and i've left the carriers right out in the open, unlatched, and free for playing and climbing. these cats prefer to climb on the carriers than on the state-of-the-art pretty nifty cat scratcher-with-hollow-nests-inside. i mean, these two are just weird.

however weird my cats are, though, never let it be said that their human isn't crafty, shifty, and capable of base meanness. where cats and carriers are concerned, that is. no, i'd never latch one of them in there while they play. to do so would be ensure that the carriers are forever objects of terror in the lives of my dear ones.

but...

festus has been panting lately. and the hairballs are getting bad again. and there's a little place i know that will take a razor to poor baby festus and return him to me sans fur. fur is the number one cause of hairballs, or so i've heard. it's also pretty warm. as my goal this summer [please don't smite me, oh knock-on-wood spirits and now-you've-jinxed-yourself gremlins] is to go the whole time without air conditioning, poor festus has a hard time ahead of him unless he's relieved of all that fur.

and so, putting these ingredients together, i come up with a plan to scoop festus up one of these days, put the unsuspecting dear into a carrier, and cart his furry butt off to petsmart, where i will remind them that his tail is also covered in fur, and that i'd like most of that fur gone. i promise many pictures of this after things settle down and he leaves the sanctuary that is under my bed.

i'm thinking i'll get an appointment for him some time next week. i should have time thursday, in the morning perhaps. i can abduct him while he's snarfing his breakfast. why not go all out, you know? he'll be a miserable, pissy cat for a while, and i might as well give him ample reason for this behavior. a little added crankiness from being stolen from his breakfast? sure. add it to the mix.

~~~

on a note that does not involve meanness to my cats, today was my second dress fitting. it think it's odd that the frisker people at the airport violate my personal space more than the woman who's pulling at my half-done-up dress in front of a bunch of other ladies. i mean, these ladies are litterally undoing my clothes in front of other people. they are patting at my hips, piching the dress under my arms and smoothing fabric over my breasts. and still, the airport people have done worse. what a crazy, crazy world.

apparently, girls on their way to prom buy fancy dresses at this place and go through the fitting process like would-be brides in slutty red chifon. i saw a couple of them giggling over their sequins and ruffled trains while i was there. why would you spend triple digits on a prom dress, AND spend the money to get it altered? for prom? i mean, if juniors and seniors are allowed to go, that's potentially two proms per girl, more if she's enough in demand to be asked out by an upperclassman her sophomore year. that's not including homecoming crap. and i get the feeling that most of these girls would shrivel up and die if asked to wear the same dress twice. like, omg.

it's enough for me that i need to do the fancy dress thing for this wedding. possibly one day for my own. that's twice. i can handle twice in a lifetime, and it's unlikely i'll find myself saying yep to any other brides-to-be. the first time was ... ill-planned ... and i felt guilted into it anyway. this time isn't a problem at all because ems is being so cool about everything. [ems: you're the poster bride as far as the bridesmaids go... if more brides were like you, more girls would be happier to be their bridesmaids.]

i remember when i was the high school girl looking to go to a dance. my mother made me a cute little green number that i wore to at least two dances. then there was a little burgundey dress that we bought for 40 bucks on a sale rack and altered a bit to fit better. yeah. i was lucky to have a mother with talent. but i imagine a lot of the girls these days would have scoffed that talent away and demanded their princess dress from a store. those were it as far as my fancy dresses went. and they were just dresses. none of the crazy red-carpet-esque monstrosities i see these days.

yikes. [and yes, this does signify that i have grown old way before my time.]

~~~

there's a girl in my memoir class who was having a hard time believing she belonged 'among our ranks.' i know the feeling. when i first entered this whole grad school thing, i remember calling home in tears saying i was too stupid to do this, and they must have made a mistake when they let me in. i thought for most of that first year that the only reason they allowed me in the program was because one of my portfolio pieces involved a slug getting run over in the rain, and there's a guy on the committee who likes weird stuff like that. no really. i was absolutely positive i didn't belong.

so naturally, i gave this girl a talking to. i know from experience that she will continue to feel undeserving and sub-par [not in the golf sense]. but the more people tell her the truth, the more she can start to see that she really does belong 'in our ranks,' that the stuff she's writing is very good, that she's got what it takes to do this.

i was not alone in my sentiments, and our prof for the course spent this time reassuring her as well. though i doubt it could be truthful, she said i was one of the strongest writers in the program, and that if i said this girl's work was good, it was good. it was one of those 'okay, fine, if you don't believe me, who accepted you, at least believe this other writer, whose opinion is valid and unbiased' types of things. nevertheless, it's a kind of glowy feeling to have a compliment of that level tossed my way. i was not expecting it, mostly because i spend a great deal of time secretly measuring my work against that of others in the program and coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that i don't measure up. possibly, just possibly, i really am good enough to be here, and didn't get in because of a fantasy piece and a story about a slug. and possibly, just possibly, my advisor really does want to know how that thesis ends, and really is excited about the possibilities for my traitorous little alchemist. it's something i think i was needing at this point in the semester/program.

~~~

on a similar but not at all the same note, i got out of a ride from this other dude in the class. i usually get a ride to my car from him, since it's dark and i'd rather have a ride than wait for the bus. but we often talk about the pieces we've workshopped that day, and well, yesterday, we workshopped a piece of his that i literally had to walk away from at several points. it was just one of those pieces where the anger is too much, where the writing degrades into thinly veiled pornographic scenes, and then with the religious imagery tossed into the mix... i just had to walk away. repeatedly. it took me longer to critique that story than any other i can remember. and i certainly did not want to talk about it while alone in a car with this guy.

there's only one other class until the semester ends, and given that my 'parked close and it's light out' excuse worked last time, i'm thinking this next time around, i'll just be meeting some folks. really, the bus isn't bad at all, and i've never minded waiting for it. convenience isn't worth feeling uncomfortable, and while i get absolutely no bad vibes from him, i'd just rather be an untrusting bitch than sit in a car with him. that's all.

~~~

for our next memoir piece, we need to be doing some research. i'm writing about the house on golden meadow trail, and then i'm going to tie it in with the full circle my family seems to be coming to with the farm stuff. nothing too personal [well, personal to me, yeah, but not my family], and a lot of nice images. it'll be one of those happy pieces my mom is always saying i should write, and that i always say won't be successful without the dark comedy that pervades my writing. i'm very much looking forward to it, and i hope my parents will love it. it's on tap for later this week and this weekend. this is the one i really do want published, more than any of the others i've written this semester. a sort of tribute piece, as it were.

~~~

and that's about it from this end at this point in time. the semester is steamrolling me, as it usually does about now. and i'd like to finish the old english translation i'm not actually working on but should be working on. you know. my goal is to work my ass off during the day and go to bed at reasonable times no matter what comes up, knowing that i've worked and deserve the sleep. we'll see if that adult strategy actually works. i hope it does.

to that end, i need to work my ass off for another forty minutes and then collapse.

love and peace