It’s Furious Balancing

I like lists. I don’t self-identify as an obsessive list-maker, but I can say that, in general, I like lists. I like crossing things off my “Things to Do” list. I like adding things to my “Things to Do” list after I have already done them for the sheer pleasure of crossing them off. I like going over to listography and reading other peoples’ lists; it’s like eavesdropping, in a way.

I read Crazy Aunt Purl‘s blog about her Big List of 100 Things to Do Before I Die. I’m not up to concocting my own list of 100 things – unless they could be along the lines of “Travel to 99 different locations” and “Re-read A la recherché de temps perdu.” I do feel, however, that I can name 12 things to do over the course of the next year. Twelve concrete, targeted, measurable things. Believe me when I tell you that this will be far more entertaining than my coming up with any New Year’s Resolutions.

12 Things to Do in 2008 (in no particular order)

1. Floss. Complete the paperwork for the University of Tennessee’s Department of Forensic Anthropology so I may rest at The Body Farm after my death. For the squeamish, let’s just say that I plan on donating my body to science. For people who may want a tad more information, check out this article from Wired.
2. Read Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative (three volumes, people!) and Winston Churchill’s The Second World War. Both of these have been on my to-be-read pile for far too long. I admit that my to-be-read pile is not so much a “pile” as a “bookcase.” See Item 7 below.
3. Keep a daily handwritten diary. I don’t mean a diary heavy on the emotional introspection, but rather one in which I keep daily observations, ideas to appear on this blog, quotes, resources, notes about patterns in my pain levels, u.s.w. I bought a Moleskine Pocket Weekly Planner for this particular purpose.
4. Box up the unwanted/unneeded household items and clothes in the basement and either (a) donate them to charity, or (b) have a garage sale. When The Husband and I moved in together, I put most of my kitchen stuff in the basement. I’ve dug out a cookie sheet or two; other than that, the kitchen stuff remains untouched. There are several other boxes down there that can be sorted and redirected. I’ve discovered that getting rid of “stuff” and “de-cluttering” is extremely liberating.
5. Finalize and sign my will. I have worked in an offshoot of the Death Care Industry as a probate and estate planning legal secretary for 15 years and I haven’t signed my will yet. This is embarrassing.
6. Pay down a minimum of $3,600 on my credit card debt. Paying $300.00 per month is more than do-able. I’ve been making monthly payments in the $400-$500 range for some time now, and I’ve stopped charging new purchases to the cards (unless I plan on paying the balance off in full each month). I’m going to get defensive here and loudly declare that I don’t have an unmanageable or onerous amount of personal debt – and I have a credit rating to die for – but I do want to get that debt paid down.
7. Complete my catalog of books on LibraryThing. To be honest, this catalog will never be complete in the true sense of the word. It will never be finished. I will never have every single one of my books entered and tagged. I am always smuggling new books into the house; some are cataloged right away, some go on the shelves right away, and some linger in ever-growing piles in my living room, bedroom, and study. I find these piles of book comforting, in some small way — but that’s another blog post.
8. Finish my Cats of Ulthar mod for Morrowind. I have three of the four cats finished, and I’ve been hung up on the last one because I can’t seem to come up with any ideas outside of a “retrieve an item from an NPC by combat” quest. Trite. Boring. An unfinished Morrowind mod isn’t much better, so I need must carry on.
9. Take a one-week vacation in a fabulous American city – one I haven’t been to before — and act like a complete and utter Tourist Dork. I keep telling myself that I need to get back to Paris, but I’ve been to Paris twice now. It’s time for something different. Right now, I’m thinking about Seattle or San Francisco.
10. Clean and remodel/redecorate one room in the house. We’ve been in our house for six or seven years now (tempus fugit), and while there are a lot of structural home improvements that need to be done, I would really like to do some painting and sprucing up. I don’t need my house to look like it came from the pages of Architectural Digest – I like the lived-in, shabby chic vibe – but I would like to have a house that doesn’t look like we moved in last week and haven’t had time to unpack. I need to have A Chat with The Husband about which room we’ll remodel, so that’s why it’s currently unspecified.
11. Knit Ice Queen. I have wanted to attempt lace knitting for some time, and this project might finally inspire me. It may be beyond my knitting skill level, but it’s just so stinkin’ gorgeous I have to give it the Old College Try. I have a few lacy scarfs on my Ravelry queue, but they can’t hold a candle to Ice Queen. I’ve never done lace and I have never knit with beads. This may just kill me, so I will need to complete Items 1 and 5 before this.
12. Watch three NetFlix movies a month – minimum. I pay for it every month, I may as well get my butt in gear and start watching the films and TV shows in my queue.

Whew! I think I’m done with my words — for the moment. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Well, let me show you one in any event:

I am working on a longer blog post, having noticed my very short entries over the course of this month. Even though I am a devout believer of Blogging Without Obligation, I need to churn out some words and get them out of my head. I’m on my way into a four-day weekend, so there will be words, words, words headed this way.

Enjoy your LOLCat Friday!

Kitty Pi III is off the blocking form. Ok, ok, I’m being a Hoity-Toity Knitter here. I don’t have a blocking form; I have a round cat condo that I borrow from the kittehs to use as a blocking form.

[Click on the pictures to super-size]

I cranked on this Kitty Pi. I think it was less than a week of solid knitting. I watched a lot of Kolchak: The Night Stalker videos and did mile after mile of boring stockinette stitch.

Even though this is my third Kitty Pi, I still can’t seem to make them large enough. I’m thinking I may need to add in another increase round to the pattern. Boy, oh boy; even more boring stockinette stitch…. Be still, my heart.

The kittehs are worth it though.

The Harry Potter Fan Grrrrrrl Top-Down Ravenclaw Raglan is finally, finally finished — and I can even wear it in public.

This was done with the help of the Top-Down Raglan Sweater Generator at knittingfool.com. If I had known how phenomenonly easy top-down raglans were, this would have been my first sweater, instead of my third.

The particulars: Cascade 220 wool, approximately 4 skeins of cobalt blue and 1 of silver/gray. Size 8 needles, ribbing on size 6. I did mess up the last cuff on one of the sleeves when I forgot to switch back to the size 6 needles for the ribbing, so there is a slight difference in the gauge for the cuffs. I don’t think any one but another knitter would notice, and even then they might not unless I pointed it out. If I were going to tweak this sweater any, I would add more length to the body of the sweater (not because it necessarily needs it, only because it would help me look less squat) and add a few more rows to the ribbing at the neck. I guess I was impatient to get this finished, it what it’s all boiling down to.

I’m already working on my next top-down raglan — a mock turtleneck done up with that lovely Malabrigo worsted in the marron oscuro colorway. I need to finish Aaron and Christopher’s Kitty Pi first, though. There is a serious dearth of kitty pis (that’s the plural of pi, not a misspelling of piss) in this house.

Christmas Eve dinner at Chez Hairball:

• Kosher Salt Encrusted Prime Rib Roast
• Horseradish Sauce
• Creamy Au Gratin Potatoes
• Roasted Asparagus avec Herbs de Provence
• Peppermint Rice Krispie Treats

I dolled up the Rice Krispie Treat recipe with some of my perpetual vanilla and organic peppermint extract, just to add that certain je nais sais qua, ya know…

Happy Holidays, cats and kittens.

I made it through those crazy pre-Christmas-vacation days at work. I wonder at my clients at times; don’t they realize that December comes at the same time every year? In any event, I have four days off.

The Husband and I didn’t do much for Christmas this year, what with losing Gregor and both of us being sick and out of sorts. Just having the time off to rest and recover will be wonderful. I want to knit and read and watch videos and go see I Am Legend and just relax.

I’m planning a rib roast for our holiday dinner, but more about all of that later. It’s Friday — time for a LOLCat!

You can tell that your level of job stress has reached an all-time high when you wake up in the morning with the following prayer on your lips:

Sweet Jesus, let me make it through the day without anything catching on fire.

A yep. There was a electrical fire in my boss’ office yesterday. Old space heater, old wiring, no surge protector. There were no injuries or loss of legal papers — just flames coming out of the outlet. This made for a very interesting morning, I must say.

There were no fires at my office today.

I’m counting it as a “good day.”

It’s important to have realistic expectations.

It’s almost done. All I have to do is to ask The Husband for help getting the House Ravenclaw patch on the front once the wool is thoroughly dry.

Oh, and here’s a picture of the Ravenclaw patch. I bought this on eBay at the same time I bought the yarn. I’m going to ask The Husband to put in on the upper left side. I’m going for that English prep school/Quidditch team look (and I’m looking to cover up an inelegant bit where I had to add in a new skein of yarn mid-row).

I’m really liking how the Cascade 220 softened after a wash with the Eucalan. My next Cascade 220 project will be the Mrs. Darcy Cardigan. I’m not sure if I’m quite ready to tackle that project, though. After doing a top-down raglan, going back to seaming and set in sleeves… Yeesh. Maybe I can redesign a top-down raglan cardi with some of the stitch pattern from the Mrs. Darcy. It’s a thought.

Christopher helped with the blocking. Nothing can be done in this house without Cat Supervision.

These are not my pictures. These kittens haven’t stopped bouncing around long enough for me to take a halfway decent picture of them. I sniped these pictures from the Ann Arbor Cat Clinic’s site. To the Unknown Cat Photographer, I tip my hat. You did a most excellent job, and I want to give you ample credit.

Here’s Aaron in one of the planter at the clinic. This little boy has the plushest fur. I don’t know if he will develop a thick undercoat like Gregor had, but his kitten coat is extra soft and dense. He’s not so much gray as silver. The Husband described his color as “gunmetal.” That’s pretty darn close, and look at those amber eyes!

Christopher is very tawny and has the most striking tabby markings. I love his “freckles” at the base of his whiskers, his eyeliner, and the rosy nose.

Two very sweet, very energetic kittens. Emma and Thomas need to warm up to them still. Thomas is being particularly curmudgeonly and cantankerous. I imagine him shaking his paw at the new arrivals and spitting, “You meddling kids! Get Off of My Lawn!!”

Happy LOLCat Friday, cats and kittens. I’ve been saving these two for a while. Images courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger.

And this one as well…

Aaron and Christopher come home us tomorrow. I’m hoping for lots of kitteh pictures.

They will be coming home with us Saturday from the Ann Arbor Cat Clinic. Aaron is the grey one, and Christopher the brown-gray tabby. I’m guessing they’re around 5 months old.

Aaron chose me as soon as I walked in the room where his cage was. He was rubbing against the bars and purring very loudly. I wasn’t planning on adopting two kittens, but I was told they were a “package deal” adoption. As the vet tech I was speaking with put it, “Aaron loves everybody and Christopher loves Aaron.” I wouldn’t separate them.

Aaron is extremely affectionate and outgoing. Christopher was sleepy from his surgery (“tutoring,” you know) but he gave me purrs and contented kitty eye blinks. He is not an antisocial kitty by any means.

No, they will not “replace” Gregor, but they will help fill up the cat-shaped hole in my heart.

I’ll write more later. I’ve got a lot of preparation to do around the house! Kitten-proofing is serious business.

Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break. — Shakespeare, Macbeth

I’ve been sitting at the keyboard for a while, debating with myself whether or not I should attempt a blog post about grief. Even though I tell myself that I write blog posts for myself alone, I know there are Readers Out There who come here to be entertained or to check out the knitting or to look at LOLCats and really don’t care to hear about the sad, icky emotional stuff.

Well, today’s post isn’t for them. I suggest to those of you who don’t want to wade through this to just go to the link in first footnote and watch the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets do Macbeth. I need to go watch those sock puppets again myself, to be honest. I could use a laugh.

There is no logic in my grieving for Gregor. There is no doubt in my mind that it was his time to go. He wasn’t eating. He wasn’t drinking hardly any water. He was getting to be a little bag of bones; he was too weak to leap on counters. There wasn’t any “cure” for him. I could have said yes to 20+ weeks of chemotherapy to buy 6 to 9 more months with him (maybe), but that wasn’t the right answer. I know that. The logical and best thing to do was to let him go.  It was definitely his time.

It hurts like hell.

Gregor was my Special One. Out of my three cats, he was the one who followed me around constantly, the one who had to sit on my lap while I was on the computer. The one who came into the bathroom with me every morning when I was getting ready for work. The one who had to come curl up next to me when I was knitting on the couch or reading in bed before I would go to sleep. At night, I would lie on my side and he would settle in next to me, filling up the hollow space under my chin, letting me hold him like a teddy bear as I fell asleep. He was Mama’s Boy, my Good Big Cat, Mr. Squeakypants, Mister G.

I miss him. I just miss him, and there’s this irrational part inside of me screaming GIVE ME BACK MY CAT to the universe even though I know that there isn’t any giving back involved in any of this.

I know time will help with the sorrow. I know I did the right thing.

I just want my cat back.

I’m going to stop here and go watch those Sock Puppets, I think. I’m not at the point where I can articulate grief, merely let it roll through me.

I came home from work at lunchtime on Friday to spend the rest of the afternoon with Gregor. We sat on the sofa, him sleeping and me knitting and watching The Two Towers and The Return of the King. When I’m depressed, sick, or out of sorts, I put The Lord of the Rings movies in the DVD player. I hadn’t really planned on watching both films all the way through, but there was a scene between Gandalf and Pippin in The Return of the King that I had to watch yesterday.

During the battle of Minas Tirith as the trolls and orcs are trying to break down the door to the second level of the city, Gandalf and Pippin have a discussion about death and dying:

Pippin: I didn’t think it would end this way.

Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path — one we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it.

Pippin: What, Gandalf? See what?

Gandalf: White shores, and beyond. A far green country under a swift sunrise.

Pippin: Well, that isn’t so bad.

Gandalf: No. No it isn’t.

I wanted to have this in mind when we took Gregor to the Ann Arbor Cat Clinic this morning. It would be a comforting thought to hold onto when I said goodbye.

A sunny, cold morning. I didn’t put him in his cat carrier until we were at the clinic; that would have been too traumatic for the poor boy. I held him in my lap with his purple polar fleece blanket to keep him cozy. He had been so weak and tired the past few days, so he sat still. No, not quietly, but still. Even his meowing was weak and tired.

At some point on the way to the clinic, The Husband mentioned that he had Me and My Shadow from Time Bandits playing in his head. So, of course, I had to sing it to Gregor.





This is how I want to remember Gregor’s last day. Sitting in the sunny spot on my lap, wrapped up in his “binky” with his Mama singing to him.

My and my shadow, strolling down the avenue (avenue, avenue, avenue)

Yes, the movie imagery from this is much different from Gandalf’s “far green country” speech, but I think it’s more fitting for Gregor and me. He always was my little shadow.

When it’s twelve o’clock we climb the stairs

We never knock ’cause nobody’s there…

There is no good news about Gregor. I don’t want to write about it here; not now.  I will probably have him euthanized Saturday.