Spread

Time to find the chairs.

I keep forgetting to keep you all informed of my day-to-day. I do note, in my head, moments that seem blog-appropriate, but in the translation to a post, they seem to lose some punch. Like the other day when the cap came off my pepper when I was making scrambled eggs. I'm happy I can consider tiny disasters blog moments, which keeps me from being upset about a wasting a quarter cup of pepper (a lot of which I was able to scrape off), but that doesn't really mean any time I mess up is a good story. Or that any interaction I don't understand has Spread potential, like when my pouter student snapped out of some reverie and said to me, when I was standing in front of the class before we started, talking to somebody else, "Oh! Out of the corner of my eye, I thought you were a gay man." What can that even mean? I had this whole narrative built up around a mix-up I can probably summarize in two sentence: I got really excited that one of my graduating grad students had the same 70s owl mug as I do, and I had all these great plans to dig mine out of the cupboard and give it to him, only to have him remind me, "No, this *is* your mug." I'd brought in some extras from home to the journal's office to go with the coffee pot I put down there.

But I'm hosting a bonfire tonight for my student editors, an idea I got fooled into by some crazy-warm early spring weather, and today's high is only supposed to reach 46, so I'm pretty certain we'll all be at least a little miserable. Maybe that'll make for some news.

Maybe I’ll pay more for a better name.

My store-brand Special K cereal is called "Essentially You, with Red Berries." And I think *I'm* bad at titles.

Finally threw out the chocolate lotion.

Started my spring cleaning with the bathroom today. Tossed a dozen grimy nail polishes and a ton of makeup I don't even understand why I bought. Plus two curling irons. Who knew they were even there, given I haven't curled my hair since senior pictures? But in all the sorting, I discovered enough floss to wrap around the earth seven times. There were multiple samples from my dentist or a full pack from the store in every container on the shelf. I'm flush in the floss department for as long as I still have teeth. So, good enough day.

Nightlife.

The animal that just scurried under my porch when I went outside was either the world's fattest cat or its most medium-sized raccoon. Don't know which I'd be more scared of.

Many thanks.

I woke up to find I'd left a candle burning all night. But I woke up, house not on fire, so I'm hoping this means the universe is not – after all – out to get me. It had its chance and left me alone.

And if the snow buries my neighborhood, I'll dig a tunnel.

Day two of the new year, and I'm snowed in.

Which, I know, sounds like a perfect opportunity to work on my syllabi for the upcoming term, but I think instead I'm going to lie around and read. Because the non-essential thing most likely to bring me to tears over the course of a semester is how I spend – between teaching and editing -- *so much* of my time reading bad stories. It seriously hurts my heart, how I'm filling myself with crappy sentences on a regular basis. And I know I'm a good teacher, and a good editor, and that these stories and sentences sometimes get better, but the percentage of writing that actually *needs* to get better is very small. The leap from incoherent and uninteresting to clearer but still uninteresting is not a leap that always needs making. So today: Aimee Bender and Kevin Brockmeier. People who never make me reach for a pen when I'm reading them.

Count it down.

I got a tarot reading in the summer of 2008, and the psychic said I'd start to pull my shit together in about three or four years. At the time, I wondered what would take me so long. But here it is, three-and-a-half years later, and while I've still got plenty that I stress over and that I'm sad about, and things I can't get quite right, I'm cuddled up on my couch on New Year's Eve pretty content. I even made the effort today to "fix" my mailbox, once again smashed into by the plowtrucks (I assume), before the new year begins, as a show of good faith to 2012.

So, sure, some of my shit may be only duct-taped together, but I'll go to bed tonight, after watching the split-screen ball drop, pretty content and with a Lions/Packers game to watch tomorrow, and chili to make, and a list of things to do after that which actually fit in with what I like and am good at. So that'll do.

Give me a better hint.

My fortune cookie last night contained three – three! – fortunes.

1. A pleasant surprise is in store for you soon.
2. You will enjoy doing something different this coming weekend.
3. You will soon be confronted ("confronted"?) with unlimited opportunities.

I don't know how the multiple-fortune magic works. Do all three apply, and if so, do they all apply to the same moment? I will be surprised and confronted and enjoy something this weekend? Bring it.

But until then, so begins the season when I take out the trash only every other week cause baby it's cold outside.

As it is gay and chaotic.

Why does it make me happy that, according to my blog stats, somebody translated the "I'm an aunt" category of Spread into Russian? Even more fun: translating it back into English. For example, this: Anecdote from four years. Georgia does indicate that yesterday, that one boots to say, in another foot-wear? "I speak: "What?" She speaks: "Give to be removed hence!" "Good, dear."

 

Or this: During the first training day was long, although my night class it did not go on wholes three and one-half of hour. On Mondays they will be rough to me for a while. But this first Monday transported, since I obtained the pair of hours during the day to my nieces. Here video I made randomly, when I thought that survey. Never forget, that. I cannot send video. But here is the shorthand record of this video: Georgia [after arriving into the camera with the chalk]: teacher will be everything confused. To me, I know.

 

Or this: It returned to another room in order to find the large of "G" all [zalyapany] and thick tomcat on its way to the basin. I said to it, he does not help and it thought about obtaining of paint from the cat fur, but only for the minute, until I sees my own sweater hem covered with red. I so am bad on the crafts, which are not connected with yarn. (Pardoning the Middle Ages. You can make unpleasant things, but this is very complicated in reality not to spoil yarn itself. Or take itself by dirty with it.)

 

Or this: I cannot wait for in order to hear them. I was g-conversation from my nieces, or as they there you call to speak through gmail of video chat room. As it is gay and chaotic. I to desire I to can catching screen to grip these small girls in the constant am happy motion. (Someone he knows, if this is possible, and as?) Of Georgia described to me history three suckling-pigs of the past at night. When I asked it, if she knew that it is more than any histories, she said, no, but I grew in order to learn more than [istorii]. You place you, dear child. She also revealed that the replacement of any random the letter, when spoke alphabet with the word of "[utka]" it was gaily ridiculous. This is truth. Try this themselves.

 

My blog's title -- Распространение – translates back into English as "Propogation." A whole meaning of "spread" I never really even considered.

The Dicks: trooper company.

Written inside the box top of my current jigsaw puzzle: "1989 – summer – John and Brenda Dick, stayed up until 1:30 to finish – never again."

The box also contained a Business Reply Card to the Consumer Affairs Department of the puzzle company with a survey on the back and the option to request a catalog. From the address, it appears to have been printed back before we started using two-letter state abbreviations, so I don't have high hopes that Battle Road Press is still located in Newton, Mass., if it exists at all, but I'm going to send it in anyway. On it, they ask for subject suggestions. And I feel so privileged now, knowing I could get a puzzle made of any dang picture I took to Walmart. I've even seen puzzles you could order where you send in your address and they make a puzzle of a satellite view of your town or house. But back in the day, no sir, you put together whatever hot-air balloon festivals or French Impressionist art you could get your hands on. Those must have been dark days.

My tissues are too room temperature.

I'm home sick with a cold for the second day in a row. Although I'm getting more done here than I would at school. Today: six kajillion letters of recommendation to write. Three down already.

On a trip to Walgreens yesterday for Thera-Flu and Nyquil, I found myself drawn to the shiny metallic teal packaging of Kleenex's Cool Touch tissues, which – get this – feel cold against your nose. It's true. I never even knew this was something I wanted – a cold Kleenex?! – but it turns out to be quite pleasurable. Consider this a recommendation. Though, consider it a recommendation from a sick person who can't really taste anything or go anywhere public, so the list of things I'm enjoying today isn't terribly long to begin with.

Turns out it was just midnight.

Finally bought an alarm clock for my bedroom. (I usually use my iPod, but it's not always reliable – too low on power by bedtime, or the sound is off for some reason. I don't know why I'm being defensive about this. So I bought myself a $10 clock. Deal with it.) Anyway, I set it yesterday afternoon, and it was still on the coffee table next to me late last night, thinking about bed. And I looked at it, and it read "12:00," and – far too quickly pessimistic – I thought, fuck, my new clock is broken.

Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.

I woke up this morning and all my clocks said 7:30, or thereabouts. I was confused. How could my phone and my DVR, both of which switch automatically, and my stove, which hasn't yet learned that trick, all be on board with falling back in sync? I figured it didn't really matter – I didn't have anywhere to get to at a particular time – but there's satisfaction that first day after when you get to think, "I really slept till 8:30; it's just called something different today." But then the world reminded me it was still only Saturday. 

In other news, this shadow has been appearing behind my curtains in the afternoons. I see nothing that shape outside. 

And then, I went to my EZ Stop today and the woman there asked if my man worked at the Landmark. I said what? She said, you guys have three little boys? I'm like, I do not know what you are talking about. And she said, oh, because it's always weird that you guys never come in here together. You're like ships in the night. He's here, then you're here at some completely other time. So: she thinks I'm with this guy, this dad, *because* she's never seen us in the store at the same time? She's a weird one.

Or maybe the paper?

My internet was out yesterday morning, and it turns out I have no idea what my morning routine is without playing my turn in Scrabble and checking out the news on Twitter. It takes me all of five minutes to get ready to leave the house, so I was suddenly up way too early, even for an 8:30 meeting. What did I used to do in the morning, pre-internet? Like read a book or something? No idea.

Did they think I was lying about not liking the beach?

Last night, I completed a "what hair color is best for you" quiz online. It was pretty mindless – was I practical or fun-loving, would I vacation in a city or on the beach, is my ideal significant other funny or protective. Pretty sure I was going to get the answer "brown." But instead, my results were this: "You answered 0 of 0 correctly!"

I have only scented candles, but they would have worked.

Quite a storm last night, I can't figure out if the fact that it's so dark out this morning has something to do with the weather or I'm just now noticing the change in seasons. I was wide awake in bed, thinking, shit why am I awake at (what looked like) 5 a.m. and then checked my clock and it said 7:30. So I got up.

The power flickered here last night and my DVR rebooted three times, which made me all nervous for – my only real concern – my night's TV programs not recording. But all was well here, nothing shut down, and I got to find out whether Jionni left Florence and how Snooki dealt. (Um, not well.) Lots of people in Marquette did lose power, though, or at least the one person I was texting, but it does appear from this morning's news that it's still out in lots of places. She was like, if I didn't work in the morning, I'd already be out at the bar (rather than home alone in the dark with no one to play board games with), and immediately I wished I was in the middle of chaos like that. Like when I was at the opera with my dad and the electricity cut out and they had to do the rest of the program by flashlight, or when during the day-long blackout when Sparky was here and we went to a friend's house and played that game where you guess song lyrics in her cold, cold house and drove all the way to Ishpeming for food. It's always more fun to be with people when things go haywire. But I don't suppose I'll be blogging nostalgically about last night's heavy rain three years from now.

Though when it warms up out there, I'll go out and assess the damage because of course I didn't do that tour of the yard I talked about yesterday. I'm not the most mindful of homeowners.

I’m just stalling.

There are dozens of mole holes in my front yard. Yikes! Now I'm super glad the cats are in for the season, because if they brought in one of those star-nosed monsters again, I might literally faint.

The image of the star-nosed mole from years ago on my blog is one of the posts that brings the most visitors to Spread. Runners-up include one calls "paint the windows black," which must be a design option many, many people are considering, and then the weird spam conversation happening on the "We have a guest post" from several years ago, which I still don't quite understand.

Supposed to be a big wind storm tonight. I've got a giant load of work to do today and this weekend (including finishing up my application for promotion), but maybe a quick trip around the yard to gather things into the garage is in order.

Lockdown.

There's a mouse around here somewhere. Cozzie brought it in last night, not long after Glee (so you just missed it, Heikks; maybe it was supposed to be a gift for you). Mouse looked in good shape, ran off, and now I can't find it anywhere. I googled my dilemma – "how do I catch a mouse?" – and everybody says, "Get a cat!" Idiots. Without cats I wouldn't have a mouse moving in.

The sting.

I've reached the stage of life when I walk into a room and forget why I went there. Actually, I've been a cliché like that for a little while. But now it's expanded to my virtual life. Over and over, I open a new tab in my browser and then have no idea what for. I try to recapture the thought, scanning the other pages I've got open, looking around the room for anything that might have prompted a need to google something. Like when you're lying in bed and suddenly wonder, how did I end up thinking about *that*, and try to trace it backwards to something you do remember thinking about. Which, for me, rarely works; the trail is too hard to follow the other way.

But sometimes it's probably good I don't remember what that new tab is for. If I lose the desire to know something so quickly, it can't have been critical. Though yesterday, I did remember I wanted to know what kind of bug had bitten me on the leg. Part of me wishes I hadn't seen all those gory images of open sores from brown recluses and disgusting arms attacked by bed bugs. But even though I usually avoid searching for any medical information online (which just leads to more things to worry about!), this time I felt way better about my little bug bite, which has almost disappeared by this morning. I went to bed grateful I don't live anywhere near a scorpion.

Stink badger!

Just made eye contact with a skunk outside my window. I hate when students have people gasping in stories, since it always sounds so put on, but I think I did it tonight when I saw him. Then he scouted my garage for a bit, found it lacking, and headed off. One cat has returned for the night, smelling regular. Here's hoping the other one comes home without incident.

Here's the view from the window:

They're actually pretty cute, and pet-sized, aren't they? If it weren't for the smelly part, I might let this one join my gang.

He’s the man who never returned.

Songs that have been stuck in my head over the past couple of days: Itsy Bitsy Spider, It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (a Christmas song?!), and a strangely upbeat version of Where Have All the Flowers Gone. I have a particular Indigo Girls song I usually use to wipe out unwanted music in my brain, but I'm getting sick of even that one since I have to turn to it so much lately. Any suggestions for erasing music from your head? If you say to sing "the Mountain Dew theme," at least link me to a youtube so I know what you're talking about. Don't sing it all monotone and expect it to be helpful to me.

It’s just kind of a brown.

I was going to tell you I dyed my hair Midnight Turtle, but that seemed weird, so I checked. It's Moonlit Tortoise. I'm not sure that's any better.

The blurb writer just doesn’t care.

I'm trying to find a movie to record for later, but everything sounds blah. Some of the summaries I'm running across:

• A couple's marriage deteriorates in the wake of a family tragedy and personal disappointments.
• A small-town Dane learns that a famous opera singer is his biological father.
• A retired New Yorker travels across the United States with his cat.
• A man gets a lot more then [sic] he bargained for when he buys a can of tuna.

(Although not blah but still what-the-what: "Guests of an opulent banquet compete in ritualistic gastronomic carnage.") The movie I actually want to see is Never Let Me Go, since I just finished the book, but I got fooled into thinking it was OnDemand, but it's OnDemand pay-channel, or something I don't have access to. And the video store – that would require me to put on shoes.

Tracked.

Does anyone else get paranoid when they enter a person into the search bar at the top of Facebook that you're actually posting that person's name as your status? Geez, I can't get over the fear of it. Lots of times, I'm doing sincere, legitimate searching – trying to find PN authors so I can get permission to post their stories, say – but I'm guilty of cyber-stalking too. I admit it. Old boyfriends, and old boyfriends' new girlfriends, people from the past I'm curious about, friends of friends of friends I don't even know, editorial clients. If I feel so weird about it, I should probably stop doing it.

And don't get me started about my google search history. I'm so paranoid that for some reason the police will have to examine my laptop for clues to my character some day (after some bizarre accidental death maybe) and get the whole wrong idea. (I always regret looking up words in Urban Dictionary, for example. "Pegging" was the latest new addition to my vocabulary. Well, vocabulary I now know, not vocabulary I use.) Or maybe they'll get the right idea, just of a prying person I wish I wasn't. I need to change my online behavior to better come across later as productive, wholesome, and not at all nosey in the newspaper reports. Or whatever. Maybe I should just start obsessing instead about the handful of people who love me, flawed as I am.

Monkey massacre.

I know, I know: Only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast. That's Joan Didion, and I agree with her. But last night's dream was so awful: piles of dead monkeys (biggish monkeys, maybe chimps?) strewn all around my back yard. My mom came over to get rid of them, and I hid inside. She finished up in seconds – way too fast to have done anything with all the bodies. But whoosh, they were gone.

Some light googling reveals that a dream of a dead monkey may mean your worst enemies will soon be removed. Yikes. I don't even know who exactly is my worst enemy, but the verb "removed" scares me a little.

Watch where you step.

You guys remember the movie The Believers from the 80s? I don't, really, since in my head it was about ghosts, but looking it up now, it seems to have something to do with cults and voodoo. But I think about the scene in which the mom gets electrocuted by the coffee pot and dies every morning when I make coffee. Every morning. Like each day starts with this small effort to be brave and risk my life.

I feel like if I understood electricity better, I could better dismiss this scene from my long-term memory. (Though my memory isn't terribly accurate. I would have sworn the mom was played by cutie-pie Annabella Sciorra until I looked it up on imdb this morning.) I remember she's standing in something wet, and there were sparks, and she got kind of stuck to the coffee pot as the electricity surged through her. That couldn't really happen, right? That's not how coffee works.

Or maybe I just need to replace that scene with another one. Any moments of pleasant, harmless coffee-making from film or TV spring to mind?

It’s tomorrow already.

What is wrong with my brain? My first thought upon seeing the local Sunday paper at the EZ Stop just now was, "Oh, it's out a day early, how lucky." Not, "Hey, it must be Sunday." I thought the entire newspaper industry had adjusted to my time just so I could check on iPad deals at Best Buy.

Goodbye, Porpoise Spit!

My i-k-comma-key fingertip has a deeply buried splinter. Or a blackberry thorn tip, probably, since I was messing around in the yard this morning. I'm trying a pointer I saw online which involves using a baking soda paste to draw the splinter out. But the bandaid makes it hard to type. And I have to type because I just watched an episode of House where he finally made the diagnosis – McLeod Syndrome? – based on the patient's many jigsaw puzzles. Uh-oh.

Though I'm not really worried. This woman had a certain amount of OCD, and except for regular trips back in the door to check the coffee pot's off, I could probably stand to be *more* obsessive and compulsive about things. Like getting this yogurt out of my pigtail.

But that'll have to wait. Just discovered Muriel's Wedding is on Netflix. And when I wake up, I'll hit the road to go get my girl. So, happy night.

Should have told me before I tipped regular.

The pizza delivery kid was freaked out by a bee and so came inside and shut the door behind him while I found a pen. He then said a name, which was weird because it was a person's name, but also the name of a kind of whiskey, so my first thought was that he wanted to stick around for a drink, which was for sure *not* what I wanted, as much as I might have had sympathy for his supposed bee allergy. Huh?, I said. So he explained that was the name of a person he worked with, who used to be my student, and who – the delivery guy said – loved me and wanted me to know. In fact, he said that the kid once professed his love to me (you know, student love) and then felt silly about it. But crap, the name didn't click, and I felt so stupid. I wanted to send my love back, but I'd already shown my blank face. Oh shoot, I said, tell him I said hello. Well, at least, he said (I think that "at least" meaning "even though you have no memory at all"), you must be a good teacher.

It was kind of a lonely day, so it was good to hear there are people in the world thinking nice things about me, but how awful I've let them go from my brain. Tonight's meditation: to imagine who have might have forgotten I love them and figure out what to do about it.

If it warms up, I can stop wearing socks.

Ordered something on Amazon the other night that cost $24.97, and free shipping kicks in at $25. So so sneaky. I spent forever trying to find something cheap to add to my cart: lip balm, a pen, maybe some of those Snyder's pretzel pieces in garlic bread flavor, which I can't find in town anymore. But none of the little items qualified for the super saving shipping, and in the end I found a pair of Mary Jane sneakers (I know, right!) that cost way more than three cents and the cost of shipping combined. Such a sucker.

Swamplandia. (No exclamation point.)

It's basement flood day today. Again. Am seriously considering house-hunting.

So I'm down there, barefoot, sweeping up water into the pit (because the sump pump works sometimes, like now, but not with enough regularity to actually do its job). And my feet are cold in the water, and I'm crabby because this means I'll have to open a window upstairs because the cats can't come down to use the litter box, and it's too cold for me to really want the window open – and this thing flits by my toes. Fudge.

I go upstairs, and try to calm down, and put on my rainboots. I screw up my courage and head back, thankful (in a rare moment) my calves fill up the boots so there's no big open space where a creature can jump into them. I get back to the squeegee. And while I'm sweeping, I see him: a frog. My basement has become fit for amphibious creatures. That's no good.

I ignore him, I clean up, wish the cats would brave the water and come eat him. I consider whether I am being tested to come around to the power of prayer. Or is this a challenge of another kind?

Well – I actually have a new sump pump, in a box, and I think I understand the simple theory of hooking it up, but the rainwater's just coming in so fast that I don't have time to mess up the installation or be leisurely about it.. But I want a longer term solution, like for someone to pick up my house and move it to the top of a hill. Who does that?

Can’t decide if I prefer charm quarks or strange quarks.

I want to love anything my little girl loves. Sci fi TV shows, fantasy cat novels, Edward Gorey, bagels. The very act of her loving something makes me crazy for it. But I'm learning my own limits as I try to wrap my head around her interest in particle physics. Don't get me wrong, I get liking science: I was a math girl at one point and good science writing can break my heart like any story. But muon neutrinos and Higgs Boson particles – I simply don't understand what these things are, no matter how simple she tries to make things for me. And then, in an attempt to connect with my new teenager, I said I'd read that some researchers had managed to capture dark matter and hold it for, like, minutes. I don't know why this matters, or how this works, or what it means, but I know it's big. Problem was I messed it up and she had to correct me: "Anti-matter." Right.

Maybe teenagers think their parents are stupid because we are. I'm trying though. When I asked what we were to make of this accomplishment, why it mattered, she said it would help us learn about our universe. I can at least honestly say I'm on board with that.

Summer’s first kill.

It's been too cold to open the windows lately, but now that today's warmed up it didn't take long for a cat to bring in his fist victim: a dead bird. Sad, but not as hard to deal with as what's in store for me. Mice and chipmunks running around behind the appliances, wounded things flying into walls. Frogs. Sick to my stomach just thinking about that last one.

Shaded.

I got my first-ever pair of prescription sunglasses, just since I've been liking wearing my glasses around lately, but if it's sunny out I can't leave the house in them. (I know, so sensitive.) They're ridiculously big – and ridiculously from Walmart's J-Lo collection – but I like them. I just haven't yet figured out the wearing of them. Like, if I walk inside someplace with them on, I automatically push them to the top of my head, and then I'm blind because I don't have my contacts in. Switching to regular glasses – if I brought them – is probably reasonable, but will take an effort to become habit. So at the grocery store tonight, I just kept them on, and that felt silly, like I was trying to be mysterious or hide a black eye. Like I don't want people to see my eyes are all cried out, when that's not the case at all: things have been really good. Please, it's lilac season.

Stomp the yard.

I love my yard, and I always want to do better by it, but I'm afraid of the sun and don't know what I'm doing. But turns out a little company and encouragement can do wonders. I cleared out a ton of random growth and burned the years-and-years' worth of kindling I had saved up for some reason. There's all this luscious space, and I even started some vegetable seeds for a little garden. And – now I have a table. With four chairs. So come over for lemonade or something, people.

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.

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.

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.

Though I can’t figure out Madden to save my life.

It was a good Easter yesterday, with my sister and the little ones. Geesh, they're fantastic.

One bummer was I discovered a key memory in my history is completely wrong. I remember, I swear, waking up early at my Grandma Zimmer's condo downstate to watch Diana and Charles' wedding in '81. We were all stretched out on the hide-a-bed. I can totally see it. But it turns out we were at home. I can't even picture it that way.

And then I drove home in the beautiful 60 degree weather and played Wii Sports all afternoon. I'm sore today. Not just from the workout (although, embarrassingly, that's part of it), but also because all those warnings they give you about making sure you don't knock shit over while you're playing aren't as silly as they seem. I clocked my fingers on the ceiling fan during a 3-point shoot-out competition and whacked my arm on the lamp playing tennis. I need a bigger house.

Do not image-search the word “bezoar.”

Little cat is stealing my ponytail holders. They're always missing, but the other night I caught him lifting one off my bedside table and scuttling off with it. I wonder if he has a nest, or if he eats them, like he does balloons. I'm afraid to check the litterbox.

Don’t forget to spring forward tonight.

I bought and hooked up a new condensate pump today. What the frig is a condensate pump, you ask? It's this lovely thing (see pic), and without it, if I let the condensation from my furnace simply empty into a bucket, I get one full bucket of water that I have to carry over to my sump pump pit and dump out every day. It appears I can't go on an overnight trip without one or else my basement will get all wet. Isn't that why I have cats instead of a dog? So I never really need to be home? (Oh, who am I kidding. I love being home most of all.)

But how is it I'm still uncovering the mysteries of this house so many years later? The box on the pump I bought said, "For your ice machine! For your drinking fountain!" (Maybe I'm inventing the punctuation.) No mention of furnaces at all, so I have to wonder why it's even there. If anyone has any ideas why my furnace expels quite so much water, go ahead and let me know. I don't even know if this little box is a good thing, or a signal of a problem, but I just went downstairs and checked on it, and it does seem to be doing its job.

Homeostasis.

My house likes being in a state of disrepair, under-repair, whatever. She is needy to be imperfect. As soon as the closet gets in good enough shape to just need the decorative stuff like curtains and maybe a great big seat cushion for the cats, the wind takes my storm door and knocks the hell out of it.

Getting old.

I pulled a muscle in my back *while sleeping* the other night. What? Ibuprofin and IcyHot have been helping, but I most wish I could take another session of Poodle's yoga. I'm sure she's have some twists that would really make me feel better.

One one eleven.

At five to midnight last night, I switched over to TV6 so I could watch the split-screen ball drop: Times Square and the Marquette intersection that has no fancy name. I saw the countdown begin – 10, 9, 8…-- and then chaos. The big cat jumped up next to me and knocked the remote onto the floor, and my DVR inexplicably switched the channel over to the Food Network. By the time I got things settled, midnight was over and people were cheering and kissing on the screen, and I never saw even a peek at the local celebration. I feel like I missed the new year completely. Here's hoping that wives' tale about January first being emblematic of what's to come doesn't really kick in until you wake up the next morning, or the whole year's going to be crazy.

Oblivious, like your father.

I've been following this mysterious smell around my house lately, like baby powder or girly deodorant or old potpourri. Mostly, I smell it in bed. It's been driving me crazy, since it's not a smell I know – not a lotion I wear or my shampoo or my Febreeze. And I only got more paranoid as I considered it. Some woman was coming in my back door and napping in my bed? She was perfuming up my cats and then leaving?

Sometimes, I'd smell it other places, in my living room, maybe. But it wasn't there when I came home. It'd just hit me sometime, halfway through the evening, on a trip back from the kitchen.

And then it just hit me, or I just woke up and paid attention: it was my new lip balm, the one I keep in the bird bath on my totem pole. The one I put on pretty much only right after I brush my teeth and head upstairs at night. I thought it was the regular Burt's Bees that I have six other tubes of – in my coat pocket, my book bag, on my coffee table – but it's not. It's some special honey blend, with some added scent, that was literally right under my nose the whole time.

Really, I didn't realize it was different until my lips started reacting to the perfumey additive like they do to lipstick, swelling up allergic and itchy. That's me, super sensitive and completely out of it. And I should have known better. I read books: the mysterious woman you think is breaking into your place and messing things up is always, always you.

Inside girls.

It's harder to get Little Sweet out into the woods this month. I have to bribe her with a Third Street bagel or a (car) ride to the library. On our last drive up from Gaylord, I did this whole big detour, through parts of the UP I'd never been to before (the Lake Superior beach at Deer Park was amazing), and down dirt roads that ended 12 miles in so we had to turn around and go all the way back to where we started. The car ride itself was great fun, and we're loving the Pendragon novels on CD, but she wasn't terribly impressed by all my stops. Waterfalls are boring. ("I mean, it's water falling," she says. Which signals, I think, that the problem is a linguistic one – there's no mystery at all in the word – and if they were called "shrouds of mistpaper" or something, she'd be more interested.) And she made me walk in to the log slide by myself with the camera and show her pictures when I got back to the car.

Luckily, I'm really on the same page most of the time, and I'd just as soon be tucked up on the couch with her and a book ("I prefer a cliffhanger to a waterfall," she says), which we do a lot, but I know this pretty weather never lasts forever, and soon enough the woods won't even be an option without snowshoes, so I keep trying. And if she doesn't come with me, I just take my iPod with and watch (lately) Breaking Bad episodes while I walk. Because even if I want a good walk, it's not like I'm a huge nature nut either, honestly.

I'm going to be a wreck next week though when she's not waiting for me when I come back.

See how they run.

Woke up to a bit of a mess here, given we had a tussle with a mouse just before bed last night. The fridge and stove are pulled out from the walls, couches and tables all akimbo. Dust bunnies everywhere, rain boots out and magnets all over the floor. We were quite a team, though, Little Sweet and I, capturing and releasing the little bugger. Though it took a good half hour or chasing him around the house with a popcorn bucket and a broom. I was sweating from pure panic, and even after we got him back outside, it took me a long time to calm down. My girl was all cool again two seconds after.

At one point, she asked me, "Don't you have anybody you could call to help?!" I didn't. It was 11:30 at night, and even in the daytime, I don't. This was all on us, I told her. We either had to handle it or lie in bed wondering how well mice climb stairs.

Infraorder anisoptera.

Tonight's prey brought in the window? The world's most giant dragonfly. Maybe this doesn't sound terrifying, but trust me. Cosmo didn't actually want to eat the monster, so much as to bat it around and make it's little wings buzz threateningly against things. And of course the only light in the place is next to me, so every time it gets a chance, it heads my way. I need a live-in animal wrangler who I can just call up from the basement when I need him.

After Cosmo got bored, I threw the little cat at it, the one who eats bugs. (Last night, there was a very big moth in my bedroom and little cat just marched up the stairs and ate it and then cuddled down with me. My hero.) But maybe this thing was too big to even register as a bug. Maybe when another cat brings something in the window, it's off limits to the rest of us. They never told me the rules.

Finally, the bug landed on a pillow and I told him, "Stay still and I'll get you back out the window." Shh, shh. And he was good, and he's back out in the wild. My cats and I need to have a talk about who and what they're welcome to bring home.