The Way We Weren’t.

March 3, 2012, by No comments yet

I don’t do high school reunions anymore.

A high-school reunion, for those of you who haven’t yet had the pleasure, is a malicious version of “This Is Your Life,” except that instead of a studio audience of admirers and friends, you are confronted by a provincial gaggle of hostile peers, waiting to judge you by ten-, twenty- or thirty-year-old expectations.

Unlike some of my classmates from my then blue-collar hometown, high school was not the high point of my life, so I guess my perceptions are a bit skewed. In fact, my memories of that time and crowd—those I haven’t successfully suppressed—make the cast of “Survivor” look like a support group. Continued…

Dig we must.

January 24, 2011, by No comments yet

The Brits have an instruction manual for everything.Ah, tis the season. A time to once again celebrate those simple, traditional rituals that bring the human family together, united in spirit and in action.

Christmas? Hanukkah? Kwanzaa? Solstice? No, I refer to the only truly universal winter ritual–one that all New Englanders practice, regardless of personal belief systems: Digging out. Continued…

There’s a TREE in our living room!

December 26, 2010, by No comments yet

2010 Christmas TreeIt’s only recently that I’ve begun taking photographs of our Christmas tree. For almost five years we didn’t put one up, even after moving to the country–we were too busy with work, school, housework, or feared that one of our cats would try to climb it while we were away from the house. But we missed not having one, and at Christmas our new, high-ceilinged, bewindowed home seemed incomplete without one. And since living in the country means that you can’t drive down a road in my little town without seeing the hand-lettered signs on every other utility pole indicating where you could get your holiday fix of pine needles and pitch, it just seemed plain unsporting to hold out just for practicality’s sake. So we caved, and now go to a nearby gentleman’s farm every year and cut our own. We’ve even gotten into the habit of acquiring one or two new ornaments a year, mainly to replace the inevitable broken or faded one–with the exception of one winter when we went on a bauble-buying binge at Macy’s and Pier One Imports and came home with two shopping bags full, some of which we have yet to take out of their boxes. Continued…

Too ridiculous for words.

February 8, 2007, by No comments yet

…but I’ll try anyway.

I’ve been to Japan and have seen how that gadget-loving nation carries hi-tech to extremes, including toilets equipped with seatwarmers, bidet-style or regular spray warm water jets for rinsing, and a fan to air dry. All hands-free. After a week of having my tush washed and dried automatically after doing my business, the novelty still hadn’t worn off.

But this is just too much. Who among us hasn’t done some reading – even if it’s just “Jokes for the John” – while waiting for nature to take its course? And I suppose iPod users aren’t apt to take their earplugs out just because they want to take a dump. But a television set? A computer? An X-Box? Oh, come on!

The single funniest feature is the refrigerator, thoughtfully placed next to the exercise machine, so you can replenish those calories at the same time you eliminate, er, work them off. And if you’re a beer drinker, the benefits are obvious.

“You might never want to leave your bathroom again,” the story ends. Hear, hear. However, the inventors did leave one thing out. A bed.

After all, with all those amenities at your fingertips, why should anyone have to leave the bathroom just to sleep, too?

And now there are three.

July 23, 2004, by No comments yet
Natasha, the Reporter Kitteh

Reporter Kitteh haz no comment.

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

Meet Natasha, manic seal-point Siamese, 12-week old skinny, spidery kitty with a voice that cuts through wood and concrete, and an insatiable need to be in your lap right now. And April, 1-year old shelter kitty, thrown by some heartless bastard from a moving car and rescued by a nearby animal hospital. She’s scarred by both the injuries she suffered from her abandonment and from God only knows what kind of abuse. This longhaired beauty desperately craves affection, but is wary and afraid. She dislikes being held, and won’t sit in anyone’s lap; if I try to hold her front paws (a necessity as I clip all my cats’ claws every two weeks), or groom and brush her luxuriant tail, she whirls and sinks her teeth into my hand as a warning. It’s going to take a lot of love and patience to get her to trust us to the point where I can handle her as easily as I can Isabel the Mellow and Natasha the Needy, but she’s already come far—I was able to comb enough tangled hair from her coat to build another complete cat, she’s stopped vomiting at the slightest stress, she loves having her belly rubbed and chin scratched, and she and Natasha get along just fine. Continued…

Friday cat blogging.

June 18, 2004, by 2 comments

Me and Brianna

Once there were two, and then one.

Our sweet Briana-na, feisty tortie-tabby extraordinaire, died on June 7 at the age of 17. That’s eighty-plus in human years. I’m still grieving. It’s hard to watch a beloved pet get old and infirm, but it is torture when you have to play God and decide that giving her mercy is preferable to letting her suffer one more day.

She was so brave. She lived with arthritis, and then hyperthyroidism and chronic renal failure. Despite her grouchy ways, she was so patient as I gave her thyroid pills, gave her antibiotics for a broken canine tooth, monitored her fluid intake, fed (and then force-fed) her special foods, gave her medicine twice daily for stomach and mouth ulcers, and cleaned up after her at 3 am when the vomiting became continuous or she lacked the strength to get into her litter box in time. I marvel at the way she grumbled but didn’t fight me as I stuck her with needles to pour Ringer’s solution into a thirsty body that gradually became, despite our best efforts, a shrunken, frail shell of her formerly cobby, muscular self. Continued…