It's Beginning to Smell A Lot Like Christmas, 2008 Edition

I decided today that it was time to let go of the summery colors decorating my little one-room apartment, and move this sucker toward winter. Don't laugh. No sooner had we here in SoCal decided to put our fans away and take down the window sun reflectors, ninety-five degree weather would return and we'd be sweltering. (But global warning is a myth, and Sarah Palin would like you to know that.)

But I think we're safe now.

I changed my sofa decor and set about to making this place smell---if not look, exactly---like Christmas.

For this we refer to the "Christmasification List." It lists the following steps be taken:

1. Replace summery, beach umbrella--colored slipcover and bedspread replace on sofa and bed with more neutral, deeper shades. I found a dark brown microsuede quilt on sale at Target, and complimented it with some lovely throw pillows. My existing red throw goes nicely.

2. Buy real pine wreath from Trader Joes, which can be cheaply replaced once it dies, sometime in the next two weeks.

3. Bring out Christmas decorations. I have gone with a lit ceramic Victorian street scene, and a Jack Sparrow-like pirate nutcracker. A ceramic Christmas tree is to follow, but Target was out of them until next week.

4. Cinnamon-soaked pine cones. Lots of them. As potpourri. Yum.

5. One Glade apple-cinnamon scented oil candle for the kitchen to complete the effect.

Things the list has barred this year? Real or fake plastic Christmas trees. As those of you who have been reading for a while already know, this is a cat zone, and therefore, sacrifices must be made. In 2006, the horror of a real Christmas tree with the many decorations from my and Savannah's childhoods, and the many shattered glass shards swept off the tile floor, convinced me that a fake tree would go over better in 2007. In 2007, I went with a tiny fake tree, the real pine wreath, and tiny ornaments I was sure the cats couldn't get off the tree.

I was wrong. Sweeping up tiny shards of tiny glass ornanents.

This year, it's all good. Ceramics and plants. I'm not going as far as George Bush did when he encouraged terrorists to "bring it on." But I'm pretty sure I've hit on a winning combination.

Happy December, people.

~C~

(cross-posted at MySpace)

Damn That Cable Company, Anyway.

I'm having intermittent problems with my cable internet reception, and no one at the cable company can figure out what the problem is.

Let's see if we can take a look and diagnose the trouble ourselves, shall we?


Oh. Dear. Yes. Well. That might be the problem, I suppose.

~C~

Getting Organized

In an attempt to break the oppressive malaise (or is it ennui?) that has kept me from writing creatively for the past several months, I have taken to cleaning and reorganizing my apartment. I am taking stuff to storage, rearranging where things are put, attempting to create clean, open spaces in a tiny single apartment, and making things work more efficiently and with less drama.

This has involved packing and scrubbing, calling the Sears repairman to come and fix my broken fridge, go shopping for a replacement for the sporadically working television, trying to redesign my living areas into more functional zones of operation. I used my Target gift cards (given me by the friends who know and love me best) to purchase several things that will help me organize my shelves and storage spaces.

Here is the beginning of organizing the bookshelves, which will store my photography and printing supplies, important papers and collections of writing.

And here are the two bins purchased to help organize the chest of drawers into socks and undies and bras.

And here is the cat bin. Hey. Wait. What?

Apparently, I have a cat bin. It wasn't purchased as a cat bin. It was purchased as a place to store all my notebooks for my writing and residency notes. It seems Inuyasha didn't get the memo. She's thinking it's the cat bin.

Hmmm... The question now is, how to convince her she's sadly mistaken. Unless of course, I'm the one who is sadly mistaken.

Another trip to the other Target is in order tomorrow for more bins and magazine boxes, so that I can rearrange my living area and make it a more reasonable space.

And to get more cat bins.

Oh, dear.

~C~

~These Confusing, Disorienting Times ~

It's easy nowadays to look up from our busy lives and discover that we have totally lost our way, and are now completely rudderless and without our bearings to find our way home. But don't take my word for it.

Just ask these little guys.



~C~

Portrait Of An Unhappy Kitty

Freya has a major tummy issue. She's been throwing up since late Saturday morning. Just when I think it's over, it starts again. She's sequestered herself in the top-most spot in my closet.

She is going to see a new vet today.
UPDATE: From unhappy to mildly indignant, but otherwise okay. This is what comes from escaping into the night and eating something dead and rotten one finds hanging out on the ground (let that be a lesson to us all!!).

But, kitty has subcue fluids, a shot of penicillin, a shot of B-12 and a shot to cure her "kitty acne," too.

All better.

~C~

Deer One

I am not going to apologize for this. It is hopelessly, tragically, critical, severely adorable, and I do NOT care who knows it.

Rupert the Fawn

There. There's your morning dose of precious. Now be gone with you and spread the cute.

~C~

Black Ops Cat

Seriously. Why are we wasting time and endangering human operatives?

This guy's good.



~C~

THE SPORT OF KINGS? OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

A horse is not fully grown until at least five years of age. The bones are not knit. The tendons and cartilage are not set. Hence, the tendency to refer to racehorses as "colts and fillies," terms for immature horses.

When you watch, bet on or in any way support American horseracing and their inclination to run horses from one to three years of age -- including the Triple Crown -- you are advocating and supporting animal abuse. Pretty hats and lovely rose wreaths do nothing to alter the fact that forcing thoroughbreds -- bred these days with spindly, thread-like, porcelain legs because it's prettier -- to run a mile and a half at top speed is a cruelty.

The death of promising filly Eight Belles, who placed in the Kentucky Derby this past Sunday, only to break down after the finish with two broken front ankles, is the result of this capricious foolishness. It's vicious and hateful. Anytime you go to Santa Anita or Hollywood Park and bet on a horse, or go to an OTB parlor, you support the abuse and cruelty that is American horseracing. Please see past the pomp and circumstance of this idiotic and brutal "sport." If we're so interested in seeing who the best jockeys are, let's let them run the races from now on. Perhaps people would find it a tad less interesting if we were euthanizing a jockey at the finish line after he broke down because he was asked to run too far, too fast, way too young.

I'm not saying we should ban the sport. I'm only asking that we start setting age minimums and shortening distances, so that we don't have yearlings, twos and three-year-olds running these grueling distances at full-bore. These aren't Dixie Cups. These are living, breathing creatures that we have responsibility for. If we started viewing horseracing as we do dog fighting, Eight Belles might have lived until her fourth birthday.

Rest in peace, Eight Belles. You were a hearty lass.

~C~