Conundrum

How, on earth, can you tell whether a cat is lethargic? They sleep and do nothing all day anyway. How do the vets figure out if it's not normal?

Scratch the Cat, Find a Fever

I see a trip to the veterinarian in my near future. My poor cat, Hush, is sick.

Every morning, Hush wakes me up at about 5:45 to let her go outside. Today she didn't ask and I therefore overslept. When I did get up, I immediately dished out some food for her. Instead of running to eat like she normally does (and it shows - a friend of mine calls her "Tubworth"), I carried her to her dish and she wasn't interested. And when I got home, she was asleep under the dustruffle of the bed. The only time she hangs out there is when she doesn't feel well or when it's thundering, and today there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

I feel so bad for her. She's opinionated, irritable, demanding, and insistent about what she wants. Today she was none of these things, nor yesterday for that matter. In short, she was well behaved and all-around just not my cat. It's no fun to be sick, and even less fun when you can't tell anyone what's wrong.

So off to the vet we'll go. That's not entirely bad though. He's pretty cute.

Measure Twice, Buy Once

Next year, I am not allowed to buy any Christmas tree taller than I am. Please remind me when that time comes.

Last year, my tree was 8'2" - a great height for a Christmas tree unless you, like me, have 8' ceilings. So this year I decided on a shorter tree, and how I wound up with one that was 8'7" is beyond me.

I am now the proud owner of a small handsaw (which caused the Home Depot guy to laugh himself silly), an 8 inch tree trunk paperweight, and one of the prettiest Christmas trees you've ever seen - without a star on top.

I would post pictures, but my camera and I are on the outs at the moment. Hopefully next week it'll like me again.

Sea Urchins

It would appear that winter has arrived. After joking last weekend that the sundress I was wearing in the 85-degree weather was my "fall wardrobe," I guess I deserve this. But I am cold and as anyone who knows me will tell you, I get crabby when I'm cold.

Last weekend I went down to Austin and had a ball. It seems like I was absolutely every place over the weekend - from little dives with way too strong drinks (lesson learned, thankyou) to the lobby of the Four Seasons (I'm not sure how that one came about either) - and like always, it makes me miss it a bunch.

Saturday night, however, I decided to take it easy. My mother is a poker-playing fiend when she can find people willing to get into a game and with four of us in the house, we played for hours. Playing anything with my mother is kind of risky, though. First, she's lucky as all get out. Bear won't play backgammon with her any more because of this. Second, she's shameless when she bluffs.

Once playing the spelling game with my father and older brothers, my mother claimed that she should win on the basis of some word or another - everyone challenged her and she told them all that she had just spelled the name of a sea urchin. A trip to the dictionary let them know she was not quite on the up and up about that. On the other hand, when she learned to play Scrabble with Bear she spelled "roux" and racked up all sorts of points by using the x. My father, wise to her wily sea-urchin-claiming ways challenged this and obviously lost. He has since become a gourmet cook and I'm not sure that these two events are unrelated.

All through Saturday's poker game we would look at my mom square in the eye and ask "sea urchin or roux?" It's not like it helped - she bluffs with the best of them, even when laughing herself silly.

I can't wait to see my family again over Thanksgiving. If it's anything like last year (which she missed), mom will be able to scare up another poker game after dinner. If she's lucky, her mother won't play because as good as my mother is, my grandmother can clean her clock at cards. It's kind of fun to watch.

Chasing Darwin

I have an undeniable soft spot for Pat Robertson. While these are words I never thought I would utter, his level of general goofiness has gone from mortifying to having high entertainment value. At the moment, he's warning the members of a Pennsylvania town that they have voted God out of office when they replaced a school board advocating "intelligent design." I hadn't realized that He met the residency requirements to make it on the ballot in the first place.

First of all, I thought that we had settled the whole evolution question the better part of a century ago. I guess I was wrong. However I find this advocation of "intelligent design" distressing for another reason: those teachers inclined to actually teach it well are precisely those that will skim over evolution.

In high school, my brother Daniel got sent to a Baptist military boarding school the year that he took biology. By the end of the year he could make a "creation ball" but the full extent of what he knew about evolution amounted to the law of the jungle. Once he hit college, he asked me to explain to him exactly what evolution is. Luckily he's a history major, but it scares me to think that a generation of American scientists may find themselves in the same boat - not knowing a thing about the most accepted origination theory until they reach their baccalaureate studies.

In the meantime, I hope every parent takes their child(ren) aside and ensures that the school system is teaching them what they need to know. Whether it is evolution, civics, history, art, languages or grammar. In this era of "teaching to the test" and "no child left behind," I believe parents, mentors and role models ought to ensure that today's kids get a full education. It's just a shame that they don't seem to be able to get it in school.

Fair Warning!

This is just pure evil...I love it!

Picture Post Test

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

My mother gives me very nice, very generous gifts which I never seem to receive because they require me to pick them out. Housewares are popular, and I believe we are now in arrears by a sofa, a set of dishes, and an armoire. No, wait - strike the armoire. I found one and bought it last weekend!

I love the armoire I picked out, and since it came from an unfinished furniture store I have been sanding, staining, and varnishing to my little heart's content. The finished product will be a color I affectionately refer to as "Irish Setter" although the label on the can says something a lot more boring and a lot less helpful. What the heck does "Classic Oak" mean anyway? Oak was the color it was when I got it.

There have been a couple of mishaps, though. First, I didn't think about how, precisely, I would be able to move this armoire from the truck actually into my house. Luckily I stumbled upon a neighbor who didn't speak enough English (Russian, yes; English, no) to refuse my pathetic plea to help me move it. The problem was that he didn't realize that he could move a lot faster walking forward than I could moving backward and ran me over with the darn thing. I am now black and blue, possibly the only person I know to be attacked by her new furniture.

The other problem is that due to a lack of workspace, I have been staining this piece in the living room. As a girl whose father wouldn't let her drink grape juice until she had graduated college because the house was carpeted, this adds a nice element of rebellion to the project. Unfortunately I can't pass the armoire without doing something to it - another coat, sanding a rough spot, something. Accordingly I have arrived to work each morning with slightly sore fingers from where I accidentally sanded them while trying to get out the door. As I told one of the partners at the office, I don't think of them as abraded, merely well exfoliated.

In the meantime I have been getting rid of furniture in order to fit the armoire in. The desk will be going to some foreign exchange students who heretofore have been using sawhorses and plywood. The desk chair has come to my office as it is a lot prettier and more comfortable than my firm-issued tush rester. And when this is over I'll have enough room left in the living room to move the couch to the other side of the living room, shift the piano against a different wall, move the filing cabinet and all the lamps, and fit in my Christmas tree this year. And truthfully, that is what spurred this project. I got the piano in January and it goes right where the tree fits. I can't get rid of the piano but I had nowhere to move it. And I just couldn't bear the thought of not having a Christmas tree this year.

If you're looking for me this week, just follow the trail of sawdust.

Shhhh!!!!

I am probably the last person in the free world to find this, but there is a site callled Post Secrets and I have to admit, I'm hooked.

The premise is simple: you make a postcard out of whatever you feel like, and on that postcard you tell one thing about yourself that you've never told anyone before. It's completely anonymous and you have to be truthful.

Some are silly, some are terrifying, and some are just a little odder than normal. But each of them is, in it's own way, a flat out emotional experience. There is something very powerful about telling a secret about yourself to the world, even under the cover of anonymity. There is also something powerful in being told that secret, and realizing that other people go through the same things you do or have some of the same weird impulses. Some are funny, some are heartbreaking, and some, like the one here, just have an indescribable sweetness to them. A quality I can't describe by any other term than veritas.

The secrets change each week and some are better than others, but it's definitely worth seeing.

Six Degrees

This evening, one of the lawyers I work with, Bryon, stuck his head in my office and asked me if I knew anyone named Priscilla in Champaign, IL. I said yes without thinking because it sounded right but then it hit me - of course I know Priscilla! I read her blog and she reads mine! Lo and behold, Priscilla is buddies with Sam the Possible Duck's mom (better known as Ann or, to me, Bryon's wife). Whaddayaknow!

I have long been convinced that this is a very small world which is a big part of why I try to be nice to (and about) everybody. I guess this is just further proof. I'm pretty sure, however, that Priscilla will get a kick out of turning out to be the focal point for the universe this particular time.

So yes, Priscilla, it is the same Sam. And as far as I can tell, he is every bit as bright and funny as Ann makes him out to be.