Monthly Archives: June 2009

He’s a small one, Mr. Jinx

Our new roommate is Jinx.

As of this writing, he is 9 weeks old, bitey of tooth and scratchy of claw. Also whiny of voice. He was born in the downstairs office of a friend of mine who rescues cats as her avocation. So far, his only trip outdoors has been to and from the car. He does not approve of Outside, or of cars. We are happy about this.

Um, what to say? He’s a tiny baby cat. He eats baby cat food that makes him pooty. His life is all sleep/eat/play/repeat. He lives his Dingo very much and thinks I am a giant toy, if his attacking my legs when I walk is any indication.

Kittens are pretty funny and cute. (I’m lukewarm on babies of all species.) I just hope his adult personality will be pleasant. It’s unfair to a tiny kitten I know, but mostly I just think, “well, he’s all right, but he’s no Boadie.”

Of course, we’ve had him for 10 days and I had her for 13 years, so time will help.

Stormy summer

Temperatures have hit >100 for a week in a row—it’s only June!—and we’ve been miserable around here. Thankfully, a tiny baby proto-hurricane (invest 93) wobbled around the Gulf, and we are getting some rain.

The new kitten, Jinx (oh hey, I should post about him) is very much perplexed by the Strange Sounds. His giant bat ears are swiveling around.

Here’s a storm memory:

Mom and Dad say that I have a lot of the details wrong about this one, but this is how I remember it:

We were living in Lynchburg, VA, and we went to Virginia Beach for a week. I was 5 or 6, I think. We stayed in a cottage that had no curtains. I remember it being so bright and sand-colored on the inside. We went to a beach shop and Mom and Dad bought me a bunch of really cool sand toys. The cottage was in a little “neighborhood” that had a pool. There were ant traps in the house. When we first got there, I shook one, and ants came out—a couple bit me, and Mom fussed at me for playing with them.

We were only there a couple of days, and there was a hurricane.

I remember a shockingly pale man, very skinny, in dark swimming trunks, standing on the diving board of the swimming pool, saying that we needed to leave. I remember that the sky behind him was dark and that there was lightning, and that I hadn’t been allowed to go in the ocean or the pool because of the lightning.

We packed up the car. I cried because I had to leave my brand-new sand toys behind, but Dad said we would be back (my sister was so small: I bet she doesn’t remember this). We drove to Norfolk, to Aunt Betty and Uncle Bev’s house.

The lived in an apartment high up in what I remember as a black, shiny building. Aunt Betty was in a wheelchair even then—she had a pair of giant wooden scissors with magnets on the “blades” that she used to reach things. I remember Uncle Bev as very tall and very taciturn, but he let me play with a Bingo set that had a cardboard shaker box filled with tiny orange pieces that had the bingo numbers on them.

It rained and rained: dark skies, dark building, shiny streets. Reaching things with those big wooden scissors and shaking small plastic bits from a box. I remember being there—the balcony (standing there with Dad), dimly lit rooms, Uncle Bev silhouetted against the sliding door—but nothing about where we slept, what we ate, how long we were there.

Mom tells me that we went back to the beach and I retrieved my sand toys.

Bring it back, WordPress!

Well, my blog seems to be gone baby gone. It is a real mystery! One of my favorite webzines, Cabinet des Fées, is having the same trouble.

I hope we will get fixed.

Update: Cabinet des Feés is back up, which gives me hope. In the meantime, I found some posts in the Google cache. It might take a while before I have all my links added again. For the 3 of you reading, I know it’s of critical importance!

In the meantime, have a very interesting Friday link: The Uniform Project. I often think fondly of having a uniform.

In some ways, I do have one – or, rather, I go through uniform-like phases. For several summers, my uniform was a long skirt and tiny t-shirt. This summer, it’s floppy trousers, retro sneakers, and cap-sleeve blouses (with tiny cardigans or cropped jackets for work). The past two winters at work, it has been boots, a just-below-the-knee skirt and a plain, sleek sweater.

I think of myself as a “pants person,” so it bemuses me how many skirts I own. The ultimate wardrobe in my head would be something like: cut down men’s Mod suits for work, plus skinny dark jeans and black t-shirts for casual and the odd Edwardian tail coat for dress-up.

(In my head I’m a little steampunk, which would not fly at my office.)

I think that Dingo sometimes rolls his eyes at my propensity to dress like a man. Let’s blame Greta Garbo and Katherine Hepburn for that one. Oh, and Mimi.

A day late and probably $1.50 short

When my little cat friend went a-wandering into the bardo, I stopped sleeping. Insomnia is like the IRS: I know it’s always going to come around, no matter how badly I want it to stay away.

And I have discovered in recent years that I am really not the Suffering Artist type. If I’m going to write anything good, I require sleep, food, and a sense of safety. And, for the love of Silenus, sobriety. I may think I’m a genius during that third glass of wine, but the next day I’ll realize all the output is crap. (Or, more likely, CRRRRRRRAP!!)

It’s been a bad month for writing. It has been a great month for knitting. I actually made a tiny dent in the pile of yarn.

The new kitten arrives tomorrow. One hopes I shall stop wallowing and get back into my routine.

And, you know, maybe even sleep, before I totally crack up.

Now the grove lives only in my head

I am the only one to call it the Grove: everyone else calls it the Fort. It was a circle of 7 or so birches making an uneven circle about 6 feet across. There is a flattish, moss-covered rock in the center.

My dad, my uncle, and their cousins had their secret meetings there. One summer, they tried to make a rule that it was for blue-eyed people only, just to leave out girls.

When I was quite little, there were nails in some of the trees: I never knew what they hung on the nails. One of the biggest trees had initials carved in it.

In 2000, when I was recovering from Troubles, I made up a little packet – a silver charm, a fortune from a cookie, and a letter to the trees – that I wrapped up in leather and buried next to the rock.

In 2001, the packet was still buried.

In 2003, it had risen up from underground. I dug a new hole and re-buried it.

In 2005, it had surfaced again, and I brought it home with me. The packet is mossy and dried shut. I don’t think I’ll ever cut it open.

Birch trees aren’t particularly long-lived, for trees. They get warty-looking, and the bark becomes fragile (less suitable for paper). The tree with the initals fell first. The circle got gaps.

Last summer, there were only 3 birches left, all of them looking a little fragile.

I took Dingo to see the grove. It’s a mossy rock surrounded by stumps. And for a minute I was sad, until he pointed out all the baby trees, growing in a rough ring around the rock.

In 20 years, I hope there will be a grove again. In the meantime, it’s in my head, the place where I go when I need rest and calm.

Closer in was the House Rock: a large, flattish rock on an angle with a tree stump rising at one end. My sister and the younger cousins played house there for whole days. The stump was the chimney. Years went by and the “chimney” got shorter and shorter. Now it’s just a little pile of rotten wood under one end of the rock.

It’s a gift to know a patch of forest so well.