Demurest of the Tabby Kind

The last few days haven't been much fun for me. Friday night I was on my way to a jazz concert when I got a phone call from my dad. He told me that my kitty had stopped using the litter box and it was probably time to put her down. She's been sick for a while. She was diagnosed with hypothyroidism about a year ago and treatment hasn't worked. She eats a ton but has been losing weight so she was just skin and bones. The last few weeks she hasn't been grooming herself so her hair had gotten all clumped and matted. This weekend she stopped using the litter box.

Saturday morning Dad called me again and said that we needed an appointment to euthanise her. Our usual vet didn't have anything until today at 4, when I would be at work, and we didn't want to wait too long because she wasn't doing well at all. He called around and found a vet's office that could get us in first thing this morning. So early today I went with Dad to the vet's and said goodbye to my cat.

She was a very good kitty. I got her when I was in 4th grade so she was about 15 years old. That's a fairly long life for a feline. Even though I didn't take her with me when I moved out, she was still very much my kitty. I'm really sad.

I'm not going to say much more because I think I might start crying again if I do. Instead, here are some pictures for you:

Rusty Made Me Do It

Rusty didn't like my list of completely random things about not me. He threatened to take away my "the great" title. I can't have that. So here you go, a list of 48 random things about me:


1. I have very weird feet. My second and third toes are longer than my big toe, and the next one is just as long.

2. I’ve been searching for the perfect pair of green shoes for a little more than two years.

3. I am completely terrified of yellow jacket wasps.

4. When I can’t sleep I memorize poetry

5. I have Wegener’s Granulomatosis.

6. I used to have a really bad lisp. I’m afraid it will come back someday

7. I own 22 pairs of sunglasses

8. I had back surgery for scoliosis when I was 13.

9. My favorite constellation is Corona Borealis

10. I have been in love with Errol Flynn since I was 6 years old. He is the absolute coolest actor/action hero/all around dude who ever lived.

11. Until I was 17 everyone thought I was older than I actually was. Now they think I’m younger than I am. I think for a while I was in a hurry to grow up; then at some point I decided I wanted to stop. Somehow that seemed to reflect on my physical appearance.

12. I have been in love twice. The first love loved me back. The second did not. They are both married now. The first one doesn’t talk to me anymore. The second does sometimes

13. I have made a point my whole life to not develop a Utah accent. I think I’ve done well. I do, however, sometime slip into a New York accent. I’ve never lived in New York. I’ve visited a few times and my mother grew up there.

14. Because of my back, I can never go skydiving. This is one of the great disappointments of my life.

15. I abhor Valentines Day. I think it is the stupidest, least romantic holiday in the history of holidays. I like it even less when I have a boyfriend. I fully believe romance should be spontaneous. There is nothing romantic about a day set aside just for romance.

16. I think better when I’m walking. If I have something I need to work out, I will go on a very long walk. After I’ve figured it out, I will usually write about it in my journal.

17. I once closed my right middle finger in a door. The fingernail fell off and grew back funny. I also hold my pens oddly because I got used to writing without that finger.

18. I have a list of every guy I have ever kissed, including random one-time drunk kisses. There are 43 names on that list; that is a lot. I like kissing.

19. My eyes change color depending on what I’m wearing. When I wear a certain green shirt of mine, my eyes turn exactly the same color. I like when my eyes are green more than when they are blue.

20. Until recently I’ve never had any long lasting quality friendships. I tend to go from one group of friends to another without even really noticing that I’ve completely made the switch. I think I still do it (I’m kind of in the process of moving into my third group of friends in 5 years), but I’ve kept a few very important friendships from old groups.

21. I never had a best friend until just a few years ago.

22. I am always disappointed with Cajun food. I get excited when I order it and expect to like it a lot, but I never do. I don’t know why.

23. I envy people with strong religious beliefs. They have something special that I think must be very comforting when life gets difficult. I haven’t joined any religion though because I can’t believe the mythologies that are out there. They just don’t make sense to me. I would feel like a great hypocrite going through the motions without actually having faith.

24. I hate, hate, hate romantic comedies. This is a loathing that I has just developed in the last year or two.

25. I am not ticklish anywhere except one spot on my lower back. I am very ticklish there if you do it just right.

26. I believe in reincarnation. I’m not sure there’s really a purpose for it, but I’m positive it happens.

27. I always have my toenails painted

28. I have, at various points in my life, had a crush on six different Newsies (Jack Kelly, Spot Conlon, Mush, Kid Blink, Specs and Dutchy).

29. I never had a crush on a teacher until my freshman year of college when I fell totally in like with my physics professor.

30. I can never remember the difference between lay/lie lain/laid so I usually avoid using those worlds. I always “set the book on the table” rather than “lay the book on the table.”

31. I have proclaimed that I will not date a guy who isn’t taller than me. The guys I’m most attracted to are usually very tall. Most of my boyfriends have been on the shorter side – my height or just an inch or two taller.

32. The night before I started high school, I decided that I was going to keep a journal. I had tried a few times earlier in life, but was never able to keep it up for more than a month or so. Since that day though I have written fairly regularly and now I have 17 full notebooks covering the last 10 years. It’s a great therapy for me. I go a little nuts if I stop writing for more than a couple weeks.

33. Every time someone uses the (non)word “funner” I die a little inside

34. I read my first Shakespeare play (Midsummer Night’s Dream) the summer before 7th grade. I don’t think I understood most of it, but I’ve been mildly obsessed with The Bard ever since and have read 15 of his plays and will undoubtedly read more. Eventually I’m sure I will have read them all.

35. The first CD I ever purchased was Ace of Base The Sign

36. I really enjoy cheese

37. I think humans have a natural tendency toward hypocrisy. I try my best not to be hypocritical. I’m not perfect about it, but I really do try. I will forgive people almost any offense unless it is blatantly hypocritical.

38. I’m usually a very social person and I really enjoy spending time with friends. I also really value my alone time and occasionally have to retreat and spend a day or two by myself reading (or sometimes writing).

39. When I was little I didn’t have imaginary friends, but I had imaginary children. Their names were Zoe (the E is silent) and Cassie (I guess I have always been very self-centered. But if guys can name their kids after themselves, why can’t I? She was like Cassie Jr). They grew up much faster than normal kids. By the time I was 10, Zoe was in jail and Cassie was getting her PhD. They never even called home anymore, such ungrateful kids!

40. I don’t want to have real kids. I’m not completely dead set against it – if I meet the right guy, fall madly in love, and he really wants kids, I can probably be talked into it. The more I think about it though, the less procreating appeals to me. The slew of recent pregnancies among my friends has made me want kids even less.

41. I have names picked out for the kids I don’t want to have: Andromeda (Andi for short) for a girl and Orion (Ryan for short) for a boy.

42. I really hate armpits. I think they are ugly and disgusting. I really hate when people touch mine, not because I’m ticklish there, but because I think it’s gross.

43. I am fascinated with language

44. I have better than perfect vision

45. I collect thimbles.

46. I wrote a wikihow article about walking in high heels. I did it anonymously though so you will never know if you’re reading the one authored by me. Except that I just linked to it. Damn.

47. I frequently have bruises on my legs (and sometimes other places) but I don’t know how I get them. I think I may kick myself in my sleep. More likely, I run into things all the time and forget/don't notice.

48. I’m convinced that I should have been a red head. I think it fits my personality and red hair is actually in my family, not too far back. Unfortunately nature decided I would be a brunette. That’s why they make hair dye.

There! Are you happy now Rusty? Does that have Ooomph? Actually, it was really easy to do. I just copied the list of 100 random things that I'm working on (I'm up to number 75) and erased the ones that were not appropriate. I have family that reads this blog; there are some thing they don't need to know.

1. 2. 3. 4. a Follow Up

I refused to do the 25 random things about myself (I am working on 100 things though. I've gotten to 65... it's harder than it looks. I don't think I'm going to share that list with the internet). Shan left me this lovely gem in the comments though and I just couldn't resist. It makes me laugh.

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, make up 25 facts, habits, goals, philosophical principles, recipes, shell scripts, sestinas, web comics, stained glass windows, or rotating bow ties. At the end, choose 25 people to “tag,” which is to say, draw on with cans of spray paint. When you have finished your “tags,” “Twitter” the results to your “Facebook” and run away.

1. You only give money to homeless people if they have an interesting sign

2. Whenever you eat broccoli you imagine that you are a huge monster and you are eating actual trees.

3. You sometimes will follow complete strangers in your car just to see how paranoid they will get about someone following them.

4. When you were six you got a carrot stuck up your nose.

5. You really believe that twisting off an apple stem will tell you the initial of the person you will fall in love with.

6. Your mother was once arrested for assault but the charges were dropped.

7. You eat onions raw, like apples.

8. You occasionally have psychic flashes, but they are always about useless and mundane things, like the color socks your best friend will wear on Tuesday.

9. You wore water wings at the pool until you were 8. When you finally took them off, you discovered you were actually an excellent swimmer and joined a swim team.

10. You spent the summer after high school "liberating" garden gnomes and flamingos. You still have them all stored in your parent's basement.

11. You read all the cartoons in the New Yorker even though you almost never think they're actually funny.

12. You're secretly a big fan of Rick Astley and get a thrill out of being rickroll'd.

13. You have a (very) irrational fear of wearing the color Orange.

14. You spent most of 8th grade wearing all black and listening to your walkman (because ipods weren't around then). People assumed you were listening to goth rock or something, but it was actually KC and the Sunshine Band

15. You have a collection of fast food kid's meal toys from when you were a kid.

16. You never get around to doing laundry until you only have one pair of clean underwear left

17. You are addicted to Barq's Red Cream Soda. You always have one box in your fridge and one in the pantry. When one runs out you start to panic a little and go to the store as soon as you can.

18. You cried when you got home after dissecting a frog in biology class because you felt like you were hurting the frog every time you cut into it.

19. You dyed your hair blonde once and did not have more fun.

20. You have the perfect murder all planned out, you just haven't found someone who deserves to die by your hand.

21. You don't actually see anything wrong with wearing socks with sandals, but you don't do it anyway because your significant other raved at you for an hour last time you did.

22. You were an extra in a Touched By an Angel episode that never aired

23. You don't have pets because you are allergic to dogs, always feel rejected around cats and iguanas are just not very good for petting.

24. You don't go on dates because you are allergic to girls, always feel rejected around boys and hermaphrodites are just not very good for petting.

25. You actually called a number you found written on a bathroom wall. The person didn't answer and you chickened out about leaving a message.

[tagged: Jeremy, Roy, Scott, Bags, Kate, Dave, Aaron, Meagan, Celcey, Doug, Claire, Shannon, Mike, Luke, Alex, Brad, Jake, Meghan, Vanessa, Talia, Sam, Ilya, Jennie, Nick, Alessa)

1. 2. 3. 4.

I think I've become obsessed with lists. I'm trying to trace the origin of this obsession back to the beginning. When did this seed get planted in my brain? I think I can safely blame my creative writing class last semester. We did a lot of lists. I do know why, but don't feel like explaining it. As a writing exercise for that class, we made our own lists, so I guess that started the ball rolling in my brain.

The subconscious idea of making lists of things was fed by some of the silly websites I look at occasionally. Cracked seems like the obvious contributor to a list obsession, but I think it's been nurtured more by Found Magazine and Post Secret. Not because those sites are particularly list oriented, but because their content reduces a person's story down to something simple, like a postcard or a list.

I adore the idea of that kind of reduction - that concentration of an event or a story into something so concise. I think it makes the story more interesting to leave out more of the details. I love finding to-do lists, either left in library books or posted on Found, and trying to figure out what is going on with the person who made the list. They're even more fun if there is something completely random on that list.

So I have played around a little with fitting life into lists. It's an interesting exercise. With a list you just get a tiny snapshot of something, and if you do it right, that little piece tells a great deal about the whole. Or it leaves a lot up to speculation and makes it more interesting than it actually is. For example (and this is a repeat if you read my twitter... arggg twitter):
Last Sunday Activities:
Laundry
Cheesecake
Football
Harem Pants
That list is a log more fun than my actual day. I went to my parent's house to do laundry, made cheesecake for a dinner party with my belly dance friends, watched a little Superbowl, then went to a dinner party with my belly dance friends (we were going to make harem pants, but never got around to it. We talked about them a lot though). It's more interesting as a simple list because all four items seems completely unrelated. The story becomes more intriguing when you have to fill in the blanks to make it all fit together.

To be fair, I am not the only one obsessed with lists. The internet is too. If you've spent any time online in the last week or so, you may have noticed the list that Ivan (which is what I, along with friends, Jake and Vanessa, named the internet. His full name is Ivanovich Malcolm Gore, just so you know) is obsessed with. Tell me if this rings a bell: "25 random things about me."

This viral phenomenon has taken over facebook and a few blogs. I haven't seen it in e-mail yet, but not many of my friend use e-mail anymore. I haven't done it yet. Not because I think the list itself is not worth doing, but I don't like the viral spreading process. It annoys me when you tell me that I have to do something like pass on a stupid letter/note/post/whatever. I am not the only one who steadfastly refuses to do it, but we holding-outers are few and far between.

There was even an article about it in the NY Times. It's a very interesting article, and it started me thinking about it a little. It's a very interesting article. Go read it. I'll wait.

This is one of my favorite parts:
For most, it seems to be a creative way to indulge in social networking without coming off as needy or shamelessly self-absorbed.
That makes me giggle. How does that not seem self-absorbed? Can someone explain that to me?

The part that talks about it as a writing exercise is really interesting to me though. And I do admit that I have read several lists and found them very fascinating. It is indeed interesting to see "what people reveal when there isn't a particular requirement." I'm thinking of making my own list, just as an exercise for myself. I may even do 100, which the article mentions was probably the original game. Actually, if I do 100 random things about me, I might post it here. After all, I am shamelessly self-absorbed and like to show that off here on my little blog thing.

Don't worry, if I do decide to post a list of my own, I wont require anyone else to make their own.