Spread

First, don’t be such a fatty-cat.

Spent a lot of the Memorial Day weekend in rented shoes, first at the roller rink, where it appears we crashed a four-year-old's birthday party, and then later at bowling, which was much more fun for my little girl (who is turning 13 on Friday, so not so little I can assume she'll have fun doing whatever anymore). Today, I've got a list of work that still needs doing, but first there was an amphitheater of bricks to move so the lawn could be mowed and my hair to dye strawberry blonde. I kind of like it. Tomorrow, I'm going to a cat show. No, I'm going to a talk on what goes on behind the scenes at cat shows. So, expect details soon.

Absolutely no help.

Caught an episode of Password the other day. The secret word was "insect." Serena Williams' first clue was "worm." Her second was "spider."

Nah, I’ll just drink some waterpops.

I liked where I was today – Georgia's dance recital – but I kept thinking I was probably in the wrong place if the rapture did happen. All the parents and families there looked so wholesome, and everybody was so sincere and glammed up, and sequined, and I thought, Yikes, Jesus has got to love everybody here way more than me. These people, it was clear, would fit in heaven. I tried to imagine where I might look better in comparison, but I suppose wherever that place is, it would have been a worse afternoon. So I guess I was betting on the world continuing. And huzzah – here I am blogging.

Gigi was supercute in her two dances. Dance two, they gave the girls some water-wing accessories as part of their costumes, and she got a little distracted trying to blow them up better instead of doing the steps, but that was adorable in itself. Check out her formal dance photo from the program.

Isa was great during the show. She snoozed a little, when she wasn't offering to hold the baby in the row behind us, but woke up after every number to clap with everybody. So polite.

And then my mom asked what I was going to do tonight when I got home, and I said I'd probably score some XYZs (replace that with the actual acronym of the essay-scoring job I do – I'm paranoid they google-search blogs to see if anybody's violating the confidentiality agreement), and at first she thought that meant I was off to buy some sort of drugs. Oops!

Home, Jeeves.

Went to lunch in Big Bay yesterday, riding in the back seat of a rental car. There were two brothers in the front, and they had catching up to do, so I read a book. Maybe that sounds rude, but it was also the most wonderful thing (and I think they were fine). I haven't gotten to read a book in a car for a million years, though I feel like this is how I spent most of my childhood. Nowadays, I'm always driving. Maybe somebody else drives once in a while, but in those cases, I can't just ignore them and sink into a book. I always have a book on CD going in the car, so I still get stories, but I also have to be doing the job of paying attention to the road. To have two people entertaining each other in the front seat, like parents, so I could lose all track of where we were and just read was a rare, rare treat. I almost wished I was reading Stephen King or V. C. Andrews, just to complete the flashback.

It also made me a little more understanding of Little Sweet, how she reads when we're in the car, even when we're listening to a novel on CD. (Sometimes, she'll have the exact same book on her Kindle that we're listening to, and she'll read ahead, so that by the time we get where we're going, she's chapters beyond what I've heard.) I guess I can see that she's probably not trying to ignore me so much as she's just reading.

Heading to Esky later today for Georgia's dance recital. So excited, but now I'm almost wishing I could take a cab there, so I could zone out with a book in the back.

Not a guest star on Will and Grace: Mariah Carey.

On the drive to the dentist this morning, I had this weird fantasy that they'd put me with the Fox-News-brainwashed hygienist, and that she'd make some outlandish homophobic or hateful comment, and that I'd get one of the dentist bosses in there and rat her out and threaten to find a new practice and get her in trouble. What a dumb thing to daydream about – being angry at some stranger. Though, I guess it's not the worst to practice being mad at someone I don't even know, for a made-up reason, if maybe someday down the road I can learn to express actual anger out loud. Working on it. And besides, they gave me my usual sweetheart lady, whose daughters go to my school. We watched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Talked weather and Good Books. Tres civil.

Speaking of dentists, I finally got around to reading James Frey's A Million Little Pieces last night. Well, the first 80 pages or so – which contained every scene I'd ever heard referenced in any review (waking up on the plane, having torturous dental surgery without any anesthesia), so I'm assuming most people stopped reading it about where I did. I mostly just found the writing boring in a hostile way. Like, I was tired of trying to understand why he'd capitalize Kitchen and Orderly. And don't even get me started on the paragraph indenting.

My new glasses.

Do cats hate bowls?

Mine seem to. They keep knocking over their water bowl, on purpose, spilling water all over my kitchen floor. I tried switching to a new bowl, thinking it might be an aesthetic problem, but with the same result. What do they want instead? A guinea pig water bottle with spout? A glass? Are they offended by water in general? Sure, one of them likes to drink out of the toilet like a dog, but I try to discourage that by keeping the lid down now. Someone – do some cat psychology and tell me what they're trying to tell me.

Virtually.

I bought a Wii Fit yesterday. The first thing it makes you do is stand on the board to check your center of balance (mine's a little to the left and behind me – who knew) and weigh you and whatnot. But as soon as it was done with the preliminaries, it took my Ellenor avatar -- with ponytails and glasses – and plumped her up. Chubbifiying sound effect included. Oh I felt so bad for her! I wasn't even particularly insulted for myself – I know I could stand to lose some weight – but my poor little icon girl didn't do anything wrong. And now I'm all motivated on her behalf. Maybe if I drop some weight, the Wii will know and slim her down a little.

In other world news…

I just posted my final grades. And: for the first time ever here, turned in and signed a contract that had no end date. Mostly, I am very happy about this. I try to keep reminding myself it doesn't mean I *have* to work here until I die.

Plus, you're looking at [the words of] the new editor-in-chief of everybody's favorite Queen City-based literary journal: PN. (Lord. I suppose at some point now, I'm going to have to learn to use real names for people and magazines. I mean, I know I had the one fiasco with the editor who was google-alterted to my blog, but who exactly do I worry is searching the internet for Passages scandal?)

An obstinacy of buffalo.

After much google-image searching, I've decided the bizarre creature I saw on Lakeshore Drive the other day was a baby ermine. With a dead mouse in its mouth. It was the weirdest-looking animal – so skinny it should have been the tail of something else. Like a seahorse made of hair, with legs. And this lump of a mouse that must have weighed three times the ermine in tow. Jogging in front of my car. I almost stopped, but that thing had speed. I never would have caught it.

Which reminds me: the cats have been outside, and it's just about that time of year when Spread becomes simply a list of half-dead animals my cats have brought through the window. Woot.