What's Wrong with Detox?

Well, folks I did end up in Detox last week, for the second time in my life, the second time in two years. And I can tell you that the process is Deeply Flawed on a number of levels, and many of those levels I'm not prepared to discuss here, because I'm not a professional, I don't know Jack Shit about the subject, and beyond that I am an Asperger's patient who, uhm, kind of has trouble with the whole Reality experience, and beyond THAT I'm still stupid enough to believe that Ginger Ale Tastes Like Love.

OK, I know that some of you are going to be WAY too young to get that joke.

But here are two, I think legitimate, points that I want to make.

1) There are no Public-Access computers available in Detox, and believe you me, a Detox patient is not allowed within fifteen feet of any kind of computer at all.

Here's the funny part: You ARE allowed access to a public cell phone.

Now, most of y'all probably think this is great. But I don't own a cell phone, never have, never will -- I don't even use my LAND LINE unless I have no other options, I don't have ANYone's telephone numbers memorized (some of them I have written down, but I keep them here on my computer or on a notepad next to my Land Line). 

So, if you put a cell phone into my hand, my immediate instinct is just to toss it out the fucking window, 'cuz honestly, I can't even figure out how to USE the damn things.

I am a person who communicates with the outside world by means of the internet. And if you say to me -- "No, you can't have access to the internet" -- that's exactly the same thing as saying to me, "Sorry, you just dropped  off the face of the planet, and nobody will ever know what happened to you, nobody will ever know where you've gone, Sorry, but you've just Ceased to Exist as  Human Being."

And not only is this Unfair, but it genuinely created some problems for my friends and family and people who care about me. It was, literally, as if I had vanished.

2) There are No Pussycats in Rehab.

You think I'm joking? I'm not. Not only was I deprived access to my OWN pussycats, who I desperately needed and I feared (as it turns out, correctly) needed me -- but I was deprived access to ANY pussycats at all. And you know what? I think that pussycats are really therapeutic. I kow that some people don't like them, but guess what? Pussycats are smart enough to know who doesn't like them and smart enough to know to stay away from folks who don't like them.

I  think every Rehab ward should have at least eight or ten pussycats living on the  premises, all of them available for adoption, all of them available to Go Home with a patient who really takes a liking to one of them. I think that this would be one of the most Amazing Healing things that any Detox Ward could do. God damn it: just give them a pussycat to pet and (if they mutually wish) Snuggle Up to.

In fact, I think that I just Invented a job that I would be the first one to apply for: 

Detox Ward Pussycat Wrangler.

Don't those of you who know me think that that job and me would be the perfect combination?

-- Freder

Far from the Madding Crowd

I now suppose that it's an Asperger's thing, but I have always hated crowds. It's gotten worse as I get older: the proximity of so many bodies bothers me, but so does the noise -- with so many people yammering away at once, it is sometimes impossible for me to understand or identify a single voice, even when the person is standing right next to me.

I try to avoid arriving at work at the same moment that classes let out just because I can't stand the flow of students around me, crossing my path, cutting me off, walking too slowly, or dominating the sidewalk by walking in groups two to four abreast. All babbling on their cell phones.

Even a busy supermarket or another person in the break room is torture. So Book Rush is one of my least favorite times of year at work: virtually the entire student body will pass through the store at some point, usually in waves at the top of the hour. Sometimes it's a challenge to get from one end of the store to the other.

I've posted about book rush before, so I won't re-tread it. I just wanted to type that with the kind of week it's been, I'm not going to beat myself up about how I plan on spending the weekend.

The Plan:

1) Not to leave the house for any reason, not to see or speak with any damn person

2) Snuggle up with my Honey cat and sleep in AS LONG AS IT TAKES -- even if it's until twelve-thirty or one in the afternoon.

3) Decompress with a movie or two, Doctor Who, Torchwood and Laurel & Hardy.

4) Eat pizza and other comforting things.

5) and last, try to get a complete first draft on the Flash Gordon piece I agreed to write in a moment of arm-twisting, but not to beat myself up if that doesn't happen.

I can't promise that I'll exactly be ready for more punishment once this strict regimen is completed, but with any luck it will get me past the gibbering, twitching, shaking stage.

-- Freder.

Grrrrrrrr!

Y'ever have one of those days when you're feeling just plain cranky and mean for no reason at all and you want to punch someone in the mouth just because they're standing there taking up space in your life? That's where I am today.

In E.C. Segar's great Thimble Theater comic strip, whenever Bluto or Popeye or anyone else is in this kind of a mood and spoiling for a fight, they walk around with a scowl on their face, and "GRRR!' GRRR!" sounds fly out of them. I can't afford to scowl or grrr at the customers, but I sure want to.

Rule number one in Customer service: Never Punch Out a Customer.

Patches (my cranky quat in the picture above) has long known herself to be the Queen of the Universe, and whenever I pick her up and hug her and smooch on her and she's not in the mood to be hugged and smooched on, she will grrrrr quite loudly. If that doesn't work, hatpins sprout from her paws, and if that doesn't work her whole body explodes in my face and she vanishes in a puff of smoke.

I wish I could do that stuff.

It's probably why Wolverine is the most popular of the "all new all different" X-Men. Rub him the wrong way and ka-SHINNNG! out come the claws, and who's going to argue with you when you can stick three foot-long razors under their chin at a moment's notice?

I often think that, as super-powers go, the Radio Shadow's mysterious power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him is a little bit under-rated. Think of how useful that could be when performance review time comes around, or when people come up to you with looks on their faces that say, "I'm going to ask you a completely idiotic question that you've answered a hundred times already this week."

A lot of you already know that the Radio Shadow was different from the Pulp Magazine Shadow, although they were ostensibly the same character. About the only things they had in common were a fondness for night work and a tendency to laugh their heads off at things that aren't funny. The Pulp Magazine Shadow didn't have any super power at all. What he did have were two ginormous .45 automatics that he never hesitated to use. Piss off The Shadow and you could end up pushing up the daisies.

I guess there are a lot of characters in fiction and the movies who we love because they don't take crap from anyone. Humphrey Bogart played most of them. Edward G. Robinson played the rest. I don't count Actual Monsters like Dracula or the Wolf Man, although you want to stay on their good side, too.

People seem to know when I am feeling cranky and then go out of their way to push my buttons. This is not surprising, as most neurotypicals are trained to sense the invisible Target signs that often superimpose themselves over the backs and faces of people like me. I no more than got off the phone with a person who spoke like they had a mouthful of marbles, when a woman came up to me and asked a question -- in a whisper. This isn't a church, lady -- it's a bookstore. Speak up or feel my wrath!!

No, what really gets me is that most inanimate objects seem to know, too. The books and boxes and bits of furniture all seem to be in communication with each other. They begin throwing themselves into my path or refusing to stay where they are put. This causes me to get flustered and frustrated in addition to being cranky, which in turn causes me to become even clumsier. The next thing I know, the whole closet shelf is coming down on my head. If you ever walk by and hear me swearing like a sailor at some inanimate object, now you know why.

I guess it's not a good thing, overall, to be this cranky -- but it's better than some other emotions I could be feeling.

-- Freder.

That Persistent, Extremely Large, Dedicated-to-his-work Black Dog

This is one of those mornings where the Prozac doesn't feel like it's working at all, one of those mornings where it's a good thing I'm not the sort of person to keep a loaded gun around the house. There are moments every now and then when if such a thing was within my grasp I would absolutely use it. Fortunately, those moments pass. Mostly, I think of my kitties. It doesn't end the depressive spell to think about snuggling with Honey or the way they all gather 'round and "bump" me when I'm putting on my shoes, but it does bring the thoughts of doing myself harm to a sudden halt.

The only reason I mention it is, I can't be the only one who sometimes feels this way, and some of the others who sometimes do are the sort of people who keep loaded guns around the house. This is the reason why we have tragedies like the one we had recently here in Maine, where a young man killed his wife, his children (nobody knows in what order) and then himself.

Anyone who believes that gun control wouldn't save a significant number of lives every year is living in a dream world. If you don't have access to those sorts of weapons, you can't harm yourself or others. I also believe that people who would turn a gun on themselves or others in the heat of the moment are far less likely to use other methods, because, as I've already typed, the moment passes -- and those other methods are slower and far more intimate. I have actually cut myself on occasion, just enough to know that I could never go deep enough to do the job. I'm not saying that gun control would put an end to all suicides, murders and accidental deaths. Humans are far too venal and inventive for that. If someone really wants to do harm, they will find a way. But we stand a better chance of stopping them if they can't just pick up a gun and start pulling the trigger.

My favorite line in the original X-Men movie comes when Sir Ian McKellan as Magneto says to a large assembled force of police officers, in tones dripping with contempt, "You homo sapiens and your guns!" -- just before using his powers to rip the weapons from their hands and turn them on the cops.

Guns bring no good into the world. But I'm realistic about gun control, because there are too many idiots out there like Charton Heston with his cold dead hands.

If we can't have gun control, I wish that others would be like me and practice self gun control. Don't give money to the gun industry, don't give in to the kind of illogical thinking that having a gun in your house will make you safe. There are better ways to "protect" yourself, including not owning one of the things.

This is also one of those mornings where it feels like a good thing to have started this blog in the first place. Sometimes it helps just to type things out.

-- Freder.

Introducing the Quats of the Duck Haus: Part Three

Pooky (short for Spooky, but also the POO being very Apropo to what she perpetrates upon me and my house every day of her life) -- came very close to dying yesterday. I had finally decided to take her to the vet, and I knew that if I did she probably wasn't coming back.

But I just couldn't do it.

It's true that she's so incontinent that I have to cover every piece of furniture. She leaves gooey "presents" behind her everywhere she sleeps. It's true that I have to clean dribs and drabs of the stuff off of the floor, wherever she goes, all day, every day. It's true that she's taken to sleeping on my bed and all the guest-room beds, and even in the sheets, so that I have to wash tons of linen every weekend (or close doors and spoil it for everyone). She knows that she's not supposed to. But in her never-ending quest to find Comfort she is refusing to confine herself anymore to the sofas. Once I found her on the quilt in the Halloween room, actually hiding under the Lion mask so that I would not see her and kick her out. I got so upset and frustrated about it a few nights back that I called the vet in the middle of the night to make an appointment, thinking, "Either they'll cure her, or they'll put her down, and I don't care which anymore. . ."

But it's not her fault.

She's a member of the family, and you don't kill family members, do you, although sometimes you want to. The cats are a trust left to me from Mom. I have to protect them and love them, much as this one sometimes makes it hard. I was crying about Mom the other night, and then I thought of Spooky and started crying even harder about her and knew that I wouldn't go through with it.

This morning, Spooky was hollering at me as usual while she waited for her breakfast. She does that every morning, because the food plate never gets set down fast enough to please her and I guess she thinks that screaming at me will make it come faster.

This morning I was in a bad enough mood that I hollered back at her, "Don't make me regret my decision! I could still change my mind, y'know!"

She seemed to understand what I meant. She shut up and calmly walked out of the room.

Poor Pooky.

Not that kind of Vet. . .

Kennebec Vet has gone all Yuppity on me in the last few years. They used to be a real country Veterinary, owned by a couple of crusty old gents who did the best that they could and treated the animals well, but who didn't believe in mollycoddling the pet "owners," if you get my drift. A while back they were bought out by a significantly younger crowd, who moved the office into a flashier, upmarket location, spent a lot on money on bells and whistles like computer touch screens for the visitors to play with while they're waiting, and so on. The assistants are now called "techs" and they wear hospital uniforms and specialize in telling you obvious things in soothing tones -- it stops just short of hand-holding. Caring and Sharing is now as much a part of their agenda as rendering your Quat heat-free.

I hadn't been there since Mom died, and so L____, the only holdover from Kennebec Vet's pre-Valley Girl Days, got the news for the first time. It's funny how taking my little Honey to the Vet dredged up a lot of emotion that, obviously, hasn't been put all that far behind me.

I'd noticed that Honey was drooling a little bit in the past couple of weeks, but it didn't appear to be anything serious until this weekend, when a lower canine suddenly jutted out of her mouth and started causing her some trouble. I thought that it might just drop out (they sometimes do) and she'd be fine. On Sunday night she still seemed pretty normal; but by Monday night she was clearly in pain, and not eating anything even though she wanted to.

On the one hand, as Whitey had shown us a while back, the tooth-pulling procedure is fairly straight forward, and something that cats bounce back from pretty well. On the other hand, I've learned that surgery is surgery, and any time you take a cat to the vet (or a human to the hospital) Complications can arise, and you may end up not seeing your loved one ever again. Of course you should never think along those lines, so of course I did. The Quats are just about all that held me together during the last year, and Honey is extra special to me. In some ways I am still smarting from the last Big Tragedy, losing Honey would be another blow that couldn't be shaken off easily.

She cried and cried on my lap all through the (thankfully) short drive, but once we were inside and being cooed at by the Designer Vets she behaved like a regular sweetheart, even through indignity of having her temperature taken. A lot of time was spent explaining this and that to me (they now charge a walk-in fee -- when did that happen?), but the actual checking in her mouth was cursory, as I knew it would be, I knew where we were headed well before the vets did.

What surprised me was that they could take her right away, and that I wouldn't have to leave her overnight. That was a relief.

During the drive home it was my turn to cry and cry. Like I said, this opened up a whole fresh can of Emotions.

They ended up pulling ten teeth, and they didn't even need to suture her because they came out so easily. The operation was over by ten-thirty or eleven, and I picked her up on the way home from work. She was out of the anesthesia, alert, looking cute and obviously happy at being out of pain. Of course she cried and cried all the way home, but it was a sign of how well she's adapted to the new house that when I set her down she sniffed the air and went around checking it out, just to see that she was Actually Home.

She was eating soft food in nothing flat, purring and making her little rolling mew sound just as if nothing had happened to her.

By this morning the pain killer they'd given her had clearly worn off, and she was working her mouth a little bit. I gave her the antibiotic and the pain killer that they sent along with me (she's not the easiest quat to give medicine to, but not the worst, either); then I had to hie me into work.

It all meant another $340 hit on my credit card, but some things you just can't question. When it comes to my little Honey, who still wants to snuggle with me every morning, the Stepford Vets have me over a barrel.

Plunder

Yesterday I went out to the old house again for what I can honestly say was the next-to-last time. I wanted the rest of the ornamental rocks and I wanted the giant children's blocks in the little barn. No, I don't have the keys anymore (and anyway they have changed the padlocks). But I lived in that place for more than thirty-five years, I know its idiosyncrasies, if I want to get in, I can.

It took some of the sting out of the drive to take a different route. I needed to swing by my lawyer's house to pick up a sign that my mother had painted many years ago. I hadn't been able to fit it into my car on the last day.

This was a nice drive that ends along the south edge of C____ Lake. Pulling into her driveway I passed a sign reading WHAT PART OF NO TRESPASSING DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND? and the near-lifesize plywood cow that I had given J___ earlier. I found my sign standing outside of her garage. She wasn't at home. When I looked into her garden I got a rude surprise: there on the end of a metal pipe was my mother's large copper rooster, the rooster that had been her shop's trademark and was a feature in our front yard for many years.

This just didn't seem right. She must have bought it at the auction, because I certainly didn't give it to her. It's one thing to part with some of Mom's treasures and know that I'll never see them again; it's quite another thing to have a special one re-appear in a completely new context. Well, it was J___'s right to buy anything she wanted at the auction, of course, and I knew that she had bought several pieces. But this felt like a little bit of a slap in the face. I stood and looked at it longer than I needed to or should have. Then, metaphorically at any rate, I shrugged and got into my car. It's not something that can be helped.

I had another shock when I reached the old house. The nice copper mailbox that I was thinking, at the suggestion of my friend L____, of swapping out with the black one that my mechanical man is holding, had been completely destroyed.

This must have taken some doing. Even the very strong, swinging iron "arm" that the mailbox had been mounted on was mangled. This thing has withstood years of being battered and hit multiple times every winter by the town snowplow, so I don't believe it was that. Either it had been worked over by someone with a lot of determination, spite and elbow grease, or someone had crashed a vehicle into it.

I would have been crushed to see this if I were still living out there. Even so, it made me sad. But once again, it was something about which there was nothing I could do.

The yard seems quite strange without any quats in it.

I loaded up the rocks. This was not an easy job. When I took two of them the last time I was out there, I hadn't imagined how much I would like seeing them at the end of my walkway here at the new house. Technically, they belong to the new owners. Not any more.

I also took my garden hose. I'd been planning on leaving it for them, but . . . I changed my mind. As my friend BC has been known to say, "I bought it, I paid for it, it's mine."

Then I got into the barn. There were two old advertising umbrellas that I had forgotten about, but needed for the yard. There were some small things, a set of Donald Duck bowling pins, a children's book, that I decided not to leave behind. I filled a couple of the giant blocks with these, and loaded them into the car. I could only fit three of the blocks inside, they were so huge. So, two remain behind. I'll get them when I pick up the jailhouse.

Back home once again. I off-loaded everything, set the rocks out along the front sidewalk, made a run to the supermarket. It was such a nice day that my neighbors had pulled out their lawn furniture, and instead of working some more in the house I decided to do the same.

I made good on my promise to the wooden deer and fixed his antlers. Then I carried him around to the front of the house. The Panda Bear, The Turkeys, The Indian, The Concrete Dog and his Doghouse, the Gas-Cannister Pig, a large ornamental pot, the second concrete bird bath, the Boinger, trellises, the Chickens, a wooden Blue Jay, the Crocodile, all came out of the garage and took up places in their new home. The Indian needed his headdress remounted and the male turkey needed to have his head glued on, so I did that. I brought out the metal table and chairs and carried them up onto the deck. I had opened most of the downstairs windows, so the quats sat there watching me whenever I came around with something new.

By the time I got done with all of this I was so pooped that I wasn't good for much more than flopping onto the porch couch. I put my feet up on The Thurber Carnival. Patches, Honey and Pooky all came to join me.

Today hasn't been nearly so productive. I've been on edge, fussing with little things.

But there's still time.

-- Freder.

ADDENDUM: Accent on the DUM. I left out the best part of the story! As I was collapsed on the porch trying to gather up enough energy to, say, stand up, a couple of kids came walking down the street. They were probably between the ages of ten and twelve. As they passed my front yard, one of them jumped up onto the rocks and skipped from one to the other all the way to the end. I thought, "Yesss!!!" That's exactly what they're for! That's exactly what I used to do when I was their age! I'm glad I went to the trouble of carting them over to a place where they will see their proper use.

Also, I finished in the Halloween Room this afternoon. It looks great if I do say so myself. And I do. Now there's just  just the Studio and the Laundry Room remaining with piles of boxes. Oh, and the upstairs hall. Still, things are coming along.

An odd relic

Pictured above is a side panel from one of the boxes I unpacked late this week. My mother had filled it with a wide range of her smaller creations -- candlesticks, necklaces and the like -- and then stowed it in the attic, lord knows how many years ago. When I found it, I exclaimed out loud: "Mom!" -- and of course it came with me.

It's hard to date this box, but it probably goes back to the late '70s. 9-Lives hasn't used that logo or design in longer than I remember. It's too bad; I like its retro stylishness, and the winking cartoon quat. You don't see many cartoon mascots for products anymore (although I've noted that Speedy is still around, and Mister Peanut never really left --  just changed his appearance a few times).

Can anyone else remember some cartoon mascots that have retired to the old mascots home, or ones that are still around?

The now-defunct (?) Hamms Beer, a local Midwestern brew, had a bear character that I always liked. We used to have a ceramic display piece featuring the bear. Haven't seen it since we moved from Southern Maine, but I popped onlike just now, and lo & behold, there was a picture of it:

Changing styles in advertising, clothing and design have always interested me, and I sometimes marvel at things like the 9-Lives box that once looked contemporary to us, but now, clearly, belong to a different era. Even the terminology has changed: "Tuna and Chicken parts" is much more open and honest than anything you see in these days of Designer Cat Food when "Tasty Temptations" and "Fancy Feast" are more likely what you see on the shelf. Back then, Quat Fud was Quat Fud.

That box goes back to the time when we had, get this, more than thirty cats outdoors, and close to twenty more indoors. My mother bought between three and five CASES of cat food every week. And as you can see on the box, there were twenty-four cans in each case.

When we fed the outside quats, we put down two big trays of food, each with at least three cans of food and whole mess of crunchies mixed in. A whole bunch o' quats would circle each tray. It was like feeding a bunch of small, furry pigs.

At that time we also had two dogs, two horses, one pony, a goat and a flock of sheep. The horses and pony were for my sister, but guess who had to help out, and guess who got stuck caring for all of them when she went away and got married? Sandy, her male palomino, hated all men, had probably been abused, but he ended up liking me better than he did her. I was the only man he ever let hug him around the neck. I was the only one he trusted, and I led him to his death.

That still haunts me to this day. He's buried at the old house, another sad memory to leave behind.

As for the cats -- one summer, I'm guessing it was in the early or middle '80s, a terrible disease swept through the yard. It killed quickly. It seemed as if a couple of times a week there was a new body for me to bury. By the time it was over, there were only about eight or ten hardy quats remaining. With comings and goings and people dropping their kittens on us, it stayed at around that number for a long time. It was only within the last decade that it got down to around six, then five, then four, then three, and finally Junior was the last to disappear. I wish he could have made it through the move. He was a sweet guy.

On her deathbed, my mother said, "Bring them in." I think she meant Junior, Whitestockings and Grumpyface.

But how could I? Grumpyface is too wild, Junior was an unspayed male, and I did try with Whitestockings. Longtime readers of this blog know how that turned out.

It's funny how something like the side panel of a cat food box can take your mind down some long-abandoned, branching pathways.

-- Freder

The Cat at Night, Nerve, and My War against the Inanimate

I need to write more about Dahlov Ipcar later; until then, this image from her book
The Cat at Night is the perfect compliment to my first story, , , 

I was so happy to see both Tiger Grumpyface and Tiger Whitestockings at different points this evening.

Three weeks ago they both seemed to be thriving, Whitestockings especially, who enjoyed the warm weather and the melting and actually stayed around during the day, sunning herself on the deck with her front paws folded beneath her.

But then as it turned colder again she seemed to get nervous and skittery. Frequently when I came home at night she would come out from under the deck and cry at me, and follow me up the stairs looking nervously over her shoulder.

Then she disappeared for a solid week.

Grumpyface had already not shown herself for two weeks prior. I wasn't all that worried, because the food was being eaten at night, and it was like her to keep a low profile. But as the weekends came and went with no sign of either of them I started to grow concerned. There are other cats in the neighborhood, and once I found one of them (a beautiful Persian) mooching off of my plate. So maybe it wasn't my guys cleaning up the food after all.

Finally, last Friday night, I opened the door and Whitestockings appeared. She ran up the deck to meet me, and I picked her up and gave her a great big hug. She didn't mind. That was something new. I stayed out for a while and petted her and talked to her while she ate.

Didn't see her again until tonight, which was very much a Repeat Performance. I did get her a special treat of Fancy Feast, to make sure that she would come back!

Earlier in the evening, while it was still light, I opened the door and saw Tiger Grumpyface's tail swirling around the corner at the foot of the stairs. She ran away across the driveway. I went to edge of the deck, looked down at her and said, "Tiger Grumpyface! I'm so happy to see you! Where have you been for three weeks?" She paused midway across the driveway and looked up at me with an expression that said, "Don't take one more step in this direction, buster!"

It's nice to know that they are alive and well, but I wonder what's going on.

*

The last couple of days, I haven't been so much depressed as anxious and easily nerved up. My ongoing war with inanimate objects has flared up again, and this has contributed to the nerves.

Some things just don't like me, especially small things. Looking back on it, I marvel at how I managed to survive in the old house with all of its bric-a-brac piled atop mountains of other bric-a-brac without destroying more of it than I actually did.

Small, fiddly things are especially vexing. Mounting the mailbox onto the mechanical man was a real battle for me, because the nuts and washers and screws were tiny and I knew that if I dropped them I would never find them again. This made me nervous and when I get nervous my hands begin to shake. When my hands begin to shake I get more frustrated and nervous and this causes my hands to shake all the more.

This morning I had a skirmish with a fork that, I swear, absolutely refused to stay on the plate.

Scrambled eggs and toast is my normal breakfast, and when it's all whipped up my usual thing is to carry it in here to the study and eat while I check the morning email, Facebook posts, etc. Usually this isn't a problem, as I carry my juice (Welch's Berry Sunsplash, yum!) in my right hand and the plate in my left with the fork curled underneath in my fingers. Today, for some reason, I just placed the fork on the plate and tried to pick it up.

It slid this way. It slid that way. I tried to make it rest against the food; instead it slid towards me. I grappled with that damn fork for half a minute until gravity finally won, and it hit the kitchen floor with a loud CLANG.

I was already feeling pretty hissy and jumpy, but the CLANG went right through me, and from there the morning went downhill.

A lamp that worked in the old house for thirty years or more suddenly decided, a couple of weeks back,  to loll and droop and throw its shade on the floor. I fought with that damn lamp for three nights, until it finally craned its neck at me and spurted sparks. FOOSH! One dead lamp.

This morning I finally put it in the car so that I could drive by the hardware store and get some parts to fix it with. But my cloth grocery bags were also on the seat, and I didn't move them; so of course the lamp was on the edge of the seat and as I pulled out of the driveway it started to throw itself all over the place.

A normal, sane person would have stopped the car, moved the bags, set the lamp up in a more secure position. If you've been paying attention at all, you know that I am not a normal, sane person. I tried to fix the situation with my right hand while I drove with my left, fussing with the lamp while careering around some very narrow and twisty sidestreets. Yes, it was exactly like something out of the Darwin Awards books except that I somehow managed to avoid killing myself.

Although I did get quite flustered and Mister Anxiety closed his hand around the base of my spine, and that son of a bitch has really cold fingers.

*

On a happier note, all of the inside quats are much more responsive and outgoing with me than they were in the old house. For the past few nights, I've had Pandy Bear and Patches sleeping with me in addition to Honey -- who does not seem to mind that the way she would have in the old house. It's been warm enough some of these days that I've been able to open the door to the front porch -- and they LOVE it. They seem to actually be disappointed when I DON'T open that door. They sit on the windowledges and the furniture, and Pandy Bear finds a sunny spot and rolls over on his back to give his tummy access to Maximum Warmth.

Honey is the only one who seems to have any reservations left whatever, and even she has found Her Places that she loves.

Today when I pulled in the driveway, she was sitting in the bay window at the side of the house. I slowed to a crawl and waved at her and shouted, "HI, HONEY!! HI, HONEY, I'M HOME!" and she raised herself onto her front paws and meowed back.

Opening Out

A View from the Brave New World

I started this post before dinner. After dinner, I stayed in my chair and watched Rachel, Rachel on TCM -- a movie that I have long wanted to see, and one that did not disappoint. Newman proves himself a skillful director, the script is lovely, Woodward delivers as usual.

There are individual lines that I would love to use as titles for posts, they resonate so powerfully:

How can I be out of danger if I'm not dead?

and

I can't keep you alive. That's not up to me. It never was.

It would give the wrong impression to say that I "identified" with Rachel, the details of her life are just too dissimilar from mine, and her dream of life is more tangible and physical than mine: she wants a child. But there are powerful parallels that can be drawn, and I don't find this unusual. I think most everyone experiences the stage of life that Rachel finds herself in, sooner or later. Some later than most.

*

I'm so glad that I didn't let my father and his wife talk me into buying the first house that we looked at. True, it would have been more affordable; but I would not have been happy there, and if I had been forced to trade out my old life for a life in a tiny little crackerbox like that, I would not have been happy. And that would have been a dangerous thing for a lot of people, me included. The thought of my sister getting everything that she wanted (i.e., money), while I was forced into drastically depleted living conditions would have angered me and darkened me to an extent that I don't even want to think about.

True, it had three bedrooms -- but those bedrooms were slightly larger than some of the closets in the old house. The dining room probably would not have been able to contain the dining room table. The living room was just a strip across the front. Both the dining and living rooms were covered with a deep shag carpet of an oppressive green that I would have had to rip up.

It was a constrictive atmosphere. The whole time we were there I was physically aware of its smallness. And that was without any furniture.

My father's point was that it wasn't permanent. It would be a launching stage from which I could go anywhere. But that was not what I needed. I'm not a fan of impermanence. I needed to land somewhere not with a bounce, but with comforting sense of settlement. I am starting from ground zero. I needed a place that was conducive to growing a new life from within.

I keep hearing people say that the new house is so big. For me, it's just the right size. Much smaller than the old house, but not so small that it doesn't possess the kind of openness that I need. I will have a study, and a studio. I have a library, and a Halloween Room, and a toy and game room. I will have a room for every time of the day, and every mood of my life. It is organized with a specific intent: to allow me the space to discover the person that I am going to become.

As I type this, my little Honey is sitting on my lap, her head rested on my left arm, purring contentedly. We have crossed through some rough terrain! But it's going to be all right.

*

And now a little shout out to FlickChick: funny what you were saying about Casablanca today! Right after Rachel, Rachel -- surprise surprise! There it is.

-- Freder.

Here at the End of Time

The old house as I prefer to remember it.

I hadn't seen Tiger Grumpyface since the last really bad storm (more than a week), and I hadn't seen Tiger Whitestockings in two days. At first I wasn't too worried; the food was still getting eaten. But today I saw not one but two strange quats eating off the Tigers' plate, and for the first time I started to suspect foul play.

Instead, when I went out with their dinner just now, both Tigers appeared and seemed eager to see me. Whitestockings had lost some weight. But all is well. Phew.

*

It was all over at the old house by a quarter to two. I felt overwhelmingly sad as I pointed the car away, oppressively sad. But when I arrived home and came into the new house, I saw that my life was here, and was immediately cheered. It's been a damn lot of work, and it's not over, and the future -- as the fortune-tellers say -- is in doubt. But home is here.

That's a mighty powerful three words.

I was up at seven-thirty to do my chores and feed us all, started out with plenty of time but somewhere along the way I spent too much time online and ended up running a bit late. The mysterious plower had been back, and this time he had shoveled out the path to the front door as well. JA, my lawyer, was no more than a couple of minutes behind me pulling into the driveway.

I was glad that she came, because it was a help in many ways. But helping me wasn't her main motive in coming -- she was hoping to score some Free Stuff.

I was okay with that. She didn't take anything without asking first, and the auctioneer was leaving a fair amount of stuff behind. I still can't understand his thinking. Some of what he took was absolute rubbish, fit only for Goodwill; meanwhile, he left some perfectly good and salable things behind. I didn't want them; or, if I did, I didn't have room for them. As an example, Mom had a set of six giant children's blocks that were made out of wood. She used them for both packing and display purposes at shows and in her shop. I'd love to keep them, but there's no room, what would I do with them? I think they'd bring something at an auction, but Steve the auctioneer was disdainful. He tried to take two small, worthless, cardboard display pieces that I expressly wanted to leave for the new owners, but he won't take the blocks.

He is a loud, brash person. He is completely bald (not even having eyebrows). He persisted in leaving the main door wide open to the cold, even when no one was carrying anything out. 

The morning was a long emotional replay of the last two times that the auctioneers had come to tear the place apart. They made a terrible mess, again. In my old bedroom I pulled down a last couple of posters. I looked out of the window for the last time. I hid in there until the tears stopped.

JA sat down with me and told me about the auction. It did not go as well as anticipated; at any rate, JA thinks that we may end up with about half of what they had estimated. As she flipped through the catalog and showed me the lots, and the prices they had gone for, I felt sick and sad. It is galling and depressing to see my mother's life reduced to numbers, and such low numbers at that. Some few things went for more than expected, but the vast majority hovered at or below the estimate. I hated even seeing that catalog. I wanted her to put it away.

The day seemed to drag on so slowly. It was cloudy out, so the light was tricky. By noon, I was sure that it was coming up on four o'clock. I was astonished to see that it was just past one when the auctioneers left.

I gave JA a key to the house and one to the small barn. Then, with both of our cars loaded to the roof, we drove down to the neighbor's house. One of the new owners is his son-in-law. We spent about a half hour there, an awful lot of formalities to go through just to drop off the keys. And that was it.

I think it will take me two more trips, not because I have so much left to take, but because it's nearly all bulky. There is a wooden deer for the lawn that I am keeping, and a giant rooster sign that my mother and I made when she was trying to have a shop there at the house. There's a stepladder that's going to have to go down the middle of the car.

I'm going to try to get it all tomorrow.

And then, suddenly, my life is going to open up again, at last. As I unloaded the car this evening, I realized that next weekend will be Entirely Free. Tomorrow, this chapter in my life will be over.

-- Freder.

Introducing the Quats of the Duck House, Part II

When my boss saw pictures of Whitey, she said "Next time you name a cat 'Whitey' make sure it's actually white."

But Whitey is named for a character on Leave it to Beaver, not for his color.

He showed up one day in our yard, so people-friendly that he followed us everywhere -- so obviously, someone dumped him.

It's their loss. Whitey is the sweetest cat with the best disposition ever. He doesn't do bad things. Oh, he loves to play and would like the other Quats to share that enthusiasm, but he never ever fights, even when Patches is batting him in the face because she doesn't want to play with him, or share my lap.

He is the smartest cat I ever knew. In the early days, when he was following us around absolutely everywhere outside and I was afraid that he would go under the car and get his damn self killed, I would make a firm STOP sign with my hand and say out loud "Stop." -- and he learned right away what that meant and he obeyed just like a dog.

But in those days he would fight with the other outside cats, or they would fight with him and he would not back down. He was always getting wounded. One day when we came out to feed them, we found Whitey so badly wounded (with a deep, bloody gash down the back of his neck) that it was clear to us he would die if we didn't do anything.

Mom was determined to save him. We took him to the vet and they sewed him up, kept him for a week pumping in fluids, etc. When he came home he came into the house, and that is where he has been ever since. You can still feel the raised scar under his fur where he was hurt.

He is so affectionate, always bumping me in the leg and wanting to be picked up and hugged. In later life, he has developed a curiosity about shadows, and when the lights come on in the evenings he follows me all around the house, boxing my shadow on the floors and walls, whipping his tail around happily.

About a year before Mom's death, I came into the kitchen one morning and found Whitey very sick and sad, obviously in pain, drooling a foul ooze from his mouth. We took him to the vet again, and she discovered that his teeth, all of them, were very badly abscessed and would have to come out. All of them. The operation itself turned out to be much less expensive than quoted, because his teeth were so bad and came out so easily.

Whitey did not mind the loss of his toofies at all, and in fact began to eat a lot better once the pain was gone. He was always sleek and svelte before, but since his toofies were pulled he has gotten notably tubbier! He likes to eat turkey and chicken with Honey, and to sit on my lap at night. With Honey behaving much less territorially about the upstairs than she did in the old house, he has even started sleeping with me.

He was Mom's absolute favorite -- and I love him a lot, too.

What's new at Azooza Zoo? or, Stuff an' Nonsense

I need to start taking new pictures of life in the All-New, All-Different DuckHaus. I was looking for a shot of the quats, but all I have were taken in the old place, and looking at those pictures makes me sick.

Strange things are happening in the new house. For instance, Patches and Honey are co-existing. Honey used to be very territorial, and would chase others (especially Patches) out of her upstairs domain with the forcefulness of an angry cop. She's not doing that anymore. Patches even slept on our bed with us all last night, and Honey didn't trouble herself over it at all.

Whitey has found the studio bedroom, and goes in there at night by himself to sleep happily on the comforter. Pandy Bear likes it, too, but he prefers the sofa in front of the gas fire. Pooky will sit anywhere that's soft. She's not going upstairs as much, and I'm just as happy with that, although I still cover my bed with newspapers every day, just in case.

I still have no telephone or internet service. The third deadline came and passed yesterday with no change. When I tried to call Fairpoint from work today, I jumped through all the hurdles they put you through and finally got the message that the office was closed. I went to their website and found a way to contact them by email. I did not hold back in my wording. I tore them a new one. I'll follow up with a call on Monday. Fairpoint is very much living up to their reputation. Their confirmation email arrived with a list of "helpful" links at the bottom. When I clicked on a link I was taken to a webpage that had nothing to do with the subject I'd selected.

Unpacking is proving troublesome. Nothing that comes out of a box that I packed in one room of the old house is actually going into a corresponding room in the new one. For every single thing I unpack, I have to stop and think about where I want it to go. Even the books: it suddenly dawned on me that there was no reason at all why all of "my" books had to go upstairs, in and around "my" room. I could put some in the dining room if I wanted. I could put them anywhere. It's all my room. So now, every single book has a decision attached to it. Which shelf, in which room, does it belong on? Is this book good enough for the dining room? Is that one good enough for what I'm calling the Library, where I am keeping all the vintage Oz books and the Poppy Otts? This is a reference book -- all reference books are now going in the study, except for my mother's books on art, antiques and collectibles, which are going in the library. All scary books are now going in the Halloween room. Children's books -- where in hell do I put them? Probably the studio.

I get long, rambling emails from my father containing paragraphs like this one:

"I really am sorry to give you this long lecture, probably for the eighth time, but Claudia has me very worried; I do not think she can be trusted; I think she can become irrational, and all that just makes my heart break and weep, but has to be faced as a possibility. In a nice way I have said much of this to J____, but she is so close to her Brother that she cannot conceive how virtually all of your Mom's estate could be eaten up (Claudia's lawyers taking the case on spec, ie fee to be paid by estate) once things really blow up. YOU MUST BE VERY CAREFUL AND NOT LEAVE ONE CRACK FOR "THEM" TO EXPLOIT. These are the real vampires of our age. They will start by asking for an accounting and will get a court order if it is not forthcoming, or that accounting is not creditable on its face. To the extent they have to use time or money to get that accounting, their fees for doing so will be paid by the estate. NOW are you starting to understand? I considered making J____ a copy of this e-mail, but decided that you should decide the extent you want me involved with her."

I got this (and two even longer, more rambling paragraphs) in response to the question "should I keep the family silver? Is it an heirloom? I don't really need it for myself." I also don't need the answer that I got!


He wrote, in a separate email:

"I used to read cases involving family estate disputes; so glad I am not Executor because Claudia would be ready to eliminate me."

 Talk like that does not help me!

Yesterday's storm left eight or nine inches of fresh snow on the ground. It's beginning to pile up. My plow guy hadn't come yesterday afternoon when I got home from work; the only reason I made it up the driveway was because it was such light and fluffy stuff.

I shoveled off the front and back steps; tonight I need to do the garage door and a path to the oil and gas tanks for the delivery person. Tomorrow I will have to shovel out the old house, yet again. I so want to get done with that phase of the move. The new house desperately wants cleaning after a month of my occupancy and the assault from the movers, but there's no time for all the other work that needs to be done.

I'm getting used to the gas stove. At first it was touch-and-go; I actually burned one of my skillets because I wasn't expecting the burner to heat up so fast. I put the skillet on the burner, turned the burner on, turned away to fix myself a drink. I thought I had time for that simple action. I'm used to a burner taking, maybe, days to heat up. The next thing I knew, I was hearing "Pop! Fizzle! Ping! Pang! Pop!" The pan was smoking.

I've learned to be very careful with the "HIGH" setting!

I see Tigers Grumpyface and Whitestockings every night. I still don't know where they go by day, but I see pussycat footprints in the snow going around behind the barn and over to the neighbor's yard. Whitestockings, at least, seems content.

-- Freder.

Moving Daze

Laurel and Hardy did it. Mickey Mouse did it. I'm surprised that the Three Stooges never did. By definition, comedy usually involves pain. The kind of pain that isn't so funny when it happens to you!

But, really, the final phase of the formal move came off as well as could be expected. I now have furniture!

When I saw the truck pull up I grabbed the cats before they could know what was happening and locked them away again in the bathroom. Much complaining from behind the door! Then I noted that the truck had not pulled up in front of the house as expected, but backed into the driveway.

I was told that the town would not let them park in the street, and that I would have to shovel the sidewalk. I said, "That's baloney! I've seen at least two moving vans parked in front of this house in the last six months! They do it all the time! It'll take me an hour to shovel this out!"

In the end, they parked in front of the house and started off-loading, and I got busy shoveling in case a cop came along and ordered them away. A cop did come along, but he paid them no attention, and I shoveled the sidewalk for nothing (the town snowblower came down the walk just a short while after I finished!)

The movers poured sand all up and down my front walkway and soon were tracking it into the house with wild abandon. Footprints everywhere. I still haven't cleaned it up; I had higher priorities. Once again Mister Complainer let his partner do the lion's share of the heavy lifting.I pitched in and lugged a bunch of stuff myself. After all, they were being paid by the hour. We loaded up the house, then they moved the van and we put the lawnmower and wheelbarrow and the garden dog and my mother's flats (display pieces that she painted to look like buildings -- she used them at art shows to display her paintings way, way back when she was pursuing art full-time while raising us youngsters) into the garage.

They came inside and assembled the beds, starting with mine. As soon as it was ready I made it up, and flopped down on it in relief. I said, out loud to the room, "This is hot!"

It was all over by around 12:30. I paid them off ($1,039.50) and waved goodbye, hoping never to need or see them again! I went inside and let the quats out.

Honey was first out the door as usual, zooming at slightly under the speed of sound, but doing it in that low, distressed crouch. "What's he done now? What's he done now?" she seemed to be thinking. I followed her upstairs. She jumped on the bed with a look of disbelief, sniffing about. "Is it? Is it really?"

Downstairs Patches was not asking questions. She knew, and was jumping on every single piece of furniture with a happy look on her face. Everyone else was sniffing, but contentment was the overall tone.

For my part, I felt suddenly exhausted, almost too weak to stand. I flopped in my comfy chair before the telly and just sank into it. I hadn't been that comfortable in a solid month. I turned on TCM.

I must say that TCM is becoming my favorite channel. In the early days of video and DVD, it was a pleasure to track down movies that I knew about and knew that I wanted to see, but TCM is a different experience entirely: I'm getting to see pictures that I never heard of, never knew I would like. Yesterday it was Two Knights from Booklyn, a 1949 comedy with William Bendix and Grace Bradley (an actress I've never encountered before that I know of, but man-o-man, whatta cutie!). It was pretty dumb, but also genuinely funny in the way that modern dumb comedies are not. I don't think I've seen Bendix do comedy before, but he's hysterical in a good-natured way.

I was not feeling any stronger, and finally realized that I hadn't eaten anything all day. I made myself breakfast and I made myself lunch, one after the other, and wolfed it all down while watching the movie, which kept going off on a new tangent just when I thought it was over. I like it when movies do that.

Eventually, TCM followed it up with another Bendix comedy, Kill The Umpire, and that was when I turned off the set and started getting on with my new job: unpacking!

This move is far from over! But anyone who has done this would know that. I wonder if anyone unpacks like me, though: I get started in one area, then something comes to light that belongs in another part of the house. I take it to where it belongs, then immediately see something that needs doing right away, get involved in that, and forget all about what I was originally doing. Shake vigorously and repeat. In the end, no one room really got done, but something got done in all the rooms, with the result that the place is really starting to shape up. It does feel and look like home now.

A dirty, messy, box-strewn version of home, but home!

And apparently, I'm not the only one who feels this way. Honey slept with me last night, all of her own volition. She left once to use the bathroom, but jumped right back into bed with me after she got herself cleaned up. I didn't have to go looking for her in the night.

Oh -- my friend Jean is doing well, and out of the hospital.

-- Freder.

Felines and Film

On Wednesday night, before making a run out to the old house, I fed the cats inside and out. Tiger Whitestockings, now quite relaxed, was waiting on the deck steps for her dinner. By the time I left, she had eaten her fill and disappeared, leaving about half a plate of food behind.

When I returned at around nine PM, the plate was clean. Clearly, another cat. One of the neighborhood cats? Or -- ?

Last night when I got home from work, a Tiger Quat was sitting at the bottom of the steps. I thought it was Tiger Whitestockings. But when I got out of the car and approached, she ran away from me, to the other side of the driveway. I heard a meow from under the deck, and Whitestockings came out through her special Secret Entrance. I looked at the cat on the other side of the drive. It was Tiger Grumpyface! -- and she was looking back at me as if to say, "Uh-uh, you ain't getting me in that car again and takin' me someplace I don' know where!"

When I set their dinner out and walked away, she came and ate. Clearly, she and Whitestockings remembered each other.

So -- I'm now marking down the Transplantation of the Outside Quats as a complete success! And the crowd roars!

Last night after dinner I unloaded the car and settled down for what turned out to be a long night of telly. Someone was airing Eyewitness, the 1981 noir thriller starring William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver and Christopher Plummer. I'd never seen it, even though it's been on my list since its original release (that's thirty years! I couldn't get over how young everyone looked!).

Was it worth the wait? Well. . . kind of.

It's well directed (by Peter Yates) and shot, in a style that feels fresh compared to contemporary cinema, where absolutely everything is done with computers and everything looks the same. As you might guess from the names, it's well-acted, too. I don't think Sigourney Weaver has ever looked better than she does in this picture, and that's saying something. The plot is fairly conventional, but structured well. And there's a fascinating (if a bit silly) climactic confrontation in a city stable.

 But the thing that really lumbers this one is the script. Much of the dialogue ranges from obvious dumb cliches to laughable stupidity. I think my favorite examples of the latter are Morgan Freeman introducing himself as "Lieutenant Black. That should be easy to remember," and  Hurt breaking up with his girlfriend:

"I don't love you."

"You're just saying that to make me feel better."

"No, really, I don't love you."

This stuff is absolutely cringe-inducing! It's funny that I dumped on  Steve Tesich just the other day in a post on this blog -- and here we have another lousy script from the same guy! I remember seeing him on The Dick Cavett Show around the time Garp was released. Cavett treated him as some kind of a Wunderkind. I think that he can't write his way out of a paper bag. It's sad to see actors of this caliber having to wrap their tongues around lines as terrible as Tesitch gives them.

So -- yeah, I'm glad to have finally seen it. But I won't be buying the DVD!

From there, I sampled a few other shows and gave up on them, before finally settling on something genuinely outrageous.

Sometimes a movie comes along that just offends every sensibility you have. You walk out, or turn it off, and try to forget all about it, if you can. Then, sometimes, a movie comes along that offends every sensibility you have -- and makes you like it! My friend BC said it best in his review of a movie called Trainspotting: "You can't believe what you're looking at, and you can't believe that you're laughing."

Such a movie is Zack and Miri Make a Porno. In a nutshell, it's an outrageously filthy version of a Mickey Rooney / Judy Garland "Let's put on -- a SHOW!" romantic comedy. The title says it all: two platonic friends decide to go into the porn business for themselves, and in the process fall in love.

By rights, it just shouldn't work. Some of the things I was exposed to last night are just -- just -- wrong! And yet I laughed like crazy, sometimes with my mouth open in astonishment, and when the credits began to roll I had a really big smile on my face. As offensive as the material gets, the damn movie is, well, charming. Elizabeth Banks, an actress I've never seen before, is a big contributor to that charm, but Seth Rogan manages to come across as a sweet, good-hearted entrepreneurial pervert, and the whole cast is quite likable, even when they are doing things that you really don't want to know about.

Kevin Smith wrote and directed, and that's another thing: I never thought I'd have anything good to say about that guy. He is a grotty little man to come up with this thing, but kudos must go out to him for, shall we say, pulling it off. It's . . . ehm . . . definitely not for everyone, but if the idea of a filthy Babes in Arms appeals to you, this is the only ticket in town! Be sure to stay through the closing credits.

--Freder

Bumping and Grinding

After work last night I sped home, fed the quats, changed into my shlubbing around clothes and drove twenty minutes out to the old house. Tuesday morning is Trash Time out there, and I had five very full bags of garbage that needed to go out. I was there for two hours, packing and loading. I have started on the things in closets and on shelves, mostly books. And, barring maybe a few chairs, I have now moved the last of the furniture that will fit in my car. It is reaching the point where there is less and less there that I actually care about. The house seems a strange and lonely place. Although I still feel an attachment, and feel wistful as I look at it from the outside, it is not home anymore.

My mother's remains are scattered around the grounds. I think about that every time I drive away.

Then it was back out to the All-New, All-Different DuckHaus, where I made dinner, gave the quats a treat, unloaded the car and got a start on unpacking what I'd just packed up.

I opened and emptied the boxes to the accompaniment of the breathless moaning and groaning of the soft-core porn on Cinemax. It wasn't at all arousing. First there would be a perfunctory stab at something that resembled a plot, then five minutes of bumping and grinding with, rather obviously, no connection of any kind between the actors, the same thing over and over with different bodies. So why did I tune in? I don't know. Perhaps in the hope that it would perk me up. Perhaps because I was so tired, and this certainly didn't require much in the way of attention. Perhaps I chose it just for novelty value. Or, perhaps, the masochist in me chose it to rub salt into the loneliness wound. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not above Creating Drama.

In any case, it didn't work.

I feel badly for the actors, some of whom are at least as talented as, say, Tom Cruise, not that that's saying much. They're all making their run at the same dream, trying to make it in Hollywood, yet this is the only acting job they can get. Do these people ever tell their parents what that big acting job was that they got last week? Do they have boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands? What do they have to say about this line of work?

But perhaps I'm being simple-minded and hypocritical. I've only ever held one job (as a typesetter for the biggest large-print book publisher in the country) that wasn't, at some level, about getting paid to be screwed -- and even then, we all ended up being screwed when the parent company laid off the entire production department and moved our jobs to Michigan.

Eventually, I got so bored with it that I switched to Anderson Cooper on CNN. He was interviewing Michael Moore, who was dumping on the Republicans -- which amounts to a different kind of pornography altogether, and much more entertaining.

My phone service was supposed to begin yesterday -- it didn't. I was looking forward to calling my father and my friend BC. Instead, I have to call the phone company from work and harangue them. Maybe I'll wait a day on that.

I haven't seen Tiger Grumpyface since the afternoon I brought her out. At the old place, it wasn't unusual for her to disappear for a couple of days at a time, but all things being new, it is worrisome. On the other hand, I've done absolutely everything I could for her, and she would be impossible to bring inside. Tiger Whitestockings, on the other hand, seems to be settling down. I see her every night. I see pussycat footprints in the yard and driveway, even up on the deck. She's not cowering anymore, but walking confidently, with her tail held high. I'd like to know where she goes during the day.

Pilgrim's Progress

My fingers on both hands are cracked, split and bleeding, which makes everything ouchy. Every muscle in my upper body is complaining. I banged my elbow on the edge of a door and it's grown a bump. Sleeping on it is murder. Moving ain't for wimps! For a solitary moment I considered letting the movers do everything that was left. But that would be prohibitively expensive, and anyway part of the process of packing lies in deciding what to keep and what not to keep.

I'd intended to spend a long day at the old house yesterday, loading up enough boxes for the whole rest of the week, so that when I dropped by in the evening, all I would have to do is load up the car and leave. But something happened to change my plans.

I caught Tiger Grumpyface!

For three days after the storm, I didn't see her. On Friday, she appeared just as I was about to leave. I put out a can of food for her, no tricks, I figured she must be pretty hungry and had no desire to hassle her.

Then on Saturday, she showed herself as soon as I arrived. She still seemed pretty hungry. Again, I wasn't going to trouble her, but then I thought, "We have the whole day. If she still won't go in to the carrier I'll take the food out of it before I go."

So I brought the cat carrier out and she watched me put the food inside of it. I went out front and continued shoveling (more on that later) and when I looked up she appeared to have gone into the carrier! I crept up as quietly as I could, but snow crunched under my feet and she scooted out onto a drift, looking at me.

I went inside. As I watched through the window, she padded down and walked right into the carrier, and appeared to be quite engrossed in the food.

I had left the doors ajar, so as to sneak out soundlessly. It worked. Only her tail was sticking out of the carrier door (which is made of metal bars). I leaned out and slammed the door shut, and put the lock through the hasp! Tiger Grumpyface freaked. She jumped onto the plate and yowled at me. But I had her!

I felt bad, though, that it had happened right at the start of the day. I still had hours of work ahead. But I resolved to cut it short and leave by 2:30 so that there would still be an hour or so of light when we got home. I left the carrier where it was, and she yowled at me every time I walked by before finally settling down.

She was better about the ride in the carrier than any of the other quats have been. When we arrived, I put the carrier under the deck, which has become Tiger Whitestockings's official way station.  I made sure that there was food right in front of the carrier door. When I unlocked it, there was a brief pause from inside, rather like a storm brewing -- then Grumpyface shot out at about mach five, past the food, around the corner of the house and out of sight. I was afraid that she would run away. But half an hour later, as I was unloading the car, I looked through the slats and found her coiled in a clear, dry corner, glaring out at me with a very Grumpy look on her face indeed. "Baleful" would be the appropriate word.

This morning she was gone. But perhaps, like Whitestockings, she will be back tonight. I've done my part. All I can do is make sure that there is always food in the same spot, and hope that she will grow a brain cell or two.

*

On Wednesday, getting the place accessible for the movers was a big part of my worries. I stopped at the local market and found a number for someone who did plowing. But a big load was taken off when I pulled into the driveway and saw that it had already been plowed! A lousy job, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? It was good enough. My guess from the big tractor tire marks is that it was the handiwork of my brother-in-law. Nice of him.

So, a big part of my trips out to the old house this week has been taken up just by shoveling snow. The movers plan to use all three main doors on the house, plus there's stuff in the big barn. It all had to be cleared. I took it a step at a time, going inside to do lighter work when I got tired.

Now -- why is it that things disappear during a move? I'm missing things. As an example, I can't find my Three Stooges DVDs or the second season of The Wild Wild West. It's not like there could have been any light-fingered moving men, because I'm the only one! Is there a vortex whose opening is triggered by the moving process? Everywhere in the world, whenever anyone moves, does the vortex open and suck random objects right out of your boxes and into a parallel universe where the missing things drift aimlessly through time and space?

I spent New Year's Eve unpacking in the new house, barely aware of the event. Upstairs, in my bedroom, I tuned the teevee to Times Square -- I've no idea which network -- and noted that only twenty minutes remained in the detestable, loathsome, hurtful and miserable year of twenty-ten. I walked down the hall to what I am calling the Studio bedroom and unpacked DVDs for what felt like about ten minutes. But when I wandered back up the hallway the countdown was at five -- four -- three . . .

I've never felt so detached from a New Year's celebration. I watched the ball drop and the crowd go wild. I watched couples frenching each other in the street. I watched the confetti fly. I watched for about thirty seconds. Then I turned off the set and went back down the hall to do some more unpacking.

-- Freder

The Storm of Christmas Past

The last four days have been hellish with an extra-special hellishness that would do Mister Lucifer proud. But, up to a critical point, most of my goals were met.

First, a quat update. When we last met, Tiger Whitestockings and Tiger Grumpyface were both Missing in Action. Both have reported in. But life is hard on an outdoors cat and these guys are taking their lumps. Whitestockings is always gone in the morning, and she stays away all day. I have no idea where she goes. But every night, usually between six and seven PM, she answers my call with a plaintive meow from under the deck, and I see to it that she gets fed. Last night, with our big winter blizzard, she was particularly upset. The fur on her back was iced up

And I saw Tiger Grumpyface every day at the old house. She knows I am trying to get my hands on her, so she runs ahead of me every time I appear, and stands off to one side meowing. I've given her a can of food every day, but on Sunday I brought the cat carrier with me and put the food inside that. She would not go in to eat. Maybe if she gets hungry enough, she will. But the blizzard prevented me from going out yesterday, and I've no plan to go out today, and the cat carrier is probably buried under twenty inches of snow. So unless unless she's cleaning up on some mice and rats out in the barn, she will be plenty hungry when I see her next!

Snow. Don't tell me how pretty it is. On my first day over at the old house, I discovered that the five or six inches we got in town on Thursday night was more like eight to ten inches in the country. I got stuck five times just trying to get into the driveway, wasted an hour, and was exhausted before I could even start in on the house.

I spent two days clearing off the furniture upstairs to make it ready for the move, and one day downstairs. It did not go without tears, usually two or three hard bouts every day. The thing that set me off first was finding a silly project of mine from my early teens. I threw it away. Another memory gone, like the pages from the book of life in Something Wicked This Way Comes.

As I packed and loaded, I also did laundry -- until the dryer died on Saturday afternoon. No more will I launder there -- anything that comes with me is going to have to come dirty. Everything I touch is destroyed.

But by Sunday night the basic mission was accomplished. Everything is ready. There will still be much work after the move, but the worst ought to be behind me at that point.

The last thing I took out of the old house on Sunday was the kitchen clock. My mother loved that clock, and its loud ticking was the heartbeat of that place for thrirty-five years. Without it, the house is still and silent.

Now it is the heartbeat at the new house.

The three days also meant three very full and successful loads to the new house. This part is fun and exciting and satisfying. I now have a dresser in my bedroom, and the television stand to store DVDs in. I have a table in my living room, with a Steiff owl in a cage sitting on it. I have a lamp and a giant child's block for a lampstand in the side room. It's getting better.

But the move, scheduled for Monday, never happened thanks to the damned blizzard, and there's no fallback date as of yet. I have to find a way to get the old house plowed out first, which is kind of hard to do without a phone. My sense is that I'll be sleeping on the mattress for at least a week longer than expected.

On Monday I braved the storm in order to come in to work and access phone and internet. My plow guy hadn't come, so I got stuck twice trying to get out. I got the message from the movers that they were canceling, left a message for them, and called up the phone company to set up phone, internet and television. By the time I got back home, the town plow had filled in the end of my driveway. I got stuck trying to get through, and it took half an hour to get out. Then I got stuck again just shy of the garage. This time there was no escape -- I couldn't move forward or backward. I only had a damn broom to clear snow away with, and couldn't get out to buy a shovel.

I spent the day poking away half-heartedly at the new website (because the old one will go away soon, and I might as well completely rethink it), and waiting for the plow guy. He never came.

Did you know that cleaning up cat vomit from the floor uses the same exact set of shoulder and arm muscles as moving? After three solid days of this, I am back to needing a break from it. My body aches all over, I'm exhausted, and my emotions are in the toilet.

The loneliness is getting to me. In the last years of her life, my mother was of little  practical help in facing the winter, but at least we had each other to talk to. I suppose I'm feeling it more for not having the option of picking up the phone or drafting an email.

On Saturday I accepted an invitation from Steve L______ and his wife Claire P_______ to join the two of them for Christmas dinner. I've known Steve casually for about four years now: he temps at the bookstore on big weekends and special events, and is one of the very few employees of the college who shares my sense of humor. We've had less chance in the past couple of years to work together, now that I am in a position of responsibility, but it was awfully nice of him and Claire to make the invite. It turns out that we are practically neighbors now: I was able to walk to their place. Their house is charming and they are good company. I spent two hours there and enjoyed it very much.

Between that and the day full of work (including a full car to unload after I left them), I hardly had to think about Christmas at all.

Tired of Nincom-cats. . . and just about everything else, really

I ended up not going out to the old house last night. It was raining too hard, and windy, and I didn't want to load and unload the car in those conditions. That was my excuse. The real reason was that I just simply needed a night off after something like ten straight days of moving; I was exhausted, aching, and my emotions were out of control after closing on the place yesterday afternoon.

Now I regret not going -- the rain has turned to snow, and if the snow doesn't stop it will make a trip out to the old place untenable, and that's not getting anything done.

But it was a lovely, peaceful evening. I played with the quats, watched an episode of UFO, made and ate a pizza (Hamburger, mushrooms, bacon and broccoli. . . must remember to give it a couple more minutes in the oven next time) and thanks to the shelving I brought over on Monday I was able to unpack and shelve six big boxes of books. I will need those boxes, going on.

It doesn't help that Tiger Whitestockings has been behaving like a ninny. For three days she hid under the Corvette that the previous owner of my house is storing in a bay of the garage, actually cowering on top of the far front wheel, not even coming out to notice that I left the garage door ajar for her. I literally had to drag her out and carry her across to the food, and kneel over her and pet her before she would eat anything. If I so much as stood up, voooom! She shot back under the car.

This morning I got pretty fed up with this bullshit, and carried her outside. I set her down with the heaping plate of food on the deck, under cover. But she freaked out all over again, and slinked away, finally taking shelter from the snow under the deck. That's probably as good a place for her as any. There's a gate that I  can put her food through. I left the garage door ajar for her again. We'll see how it develops from here, but I am honestly starting not to care. I've done everything I can.

The same goes for Tiger Grumpyface. I tried and tried to get my hands on her this past Saturday, and she ended up swiping at me with her claws. I finally decided, "Fine, if that's the way you want it." When I went back Sunday morning, there was no sign of her. When I went back Monday night, there was no sign of her. I didn't leave any food out; no point in just feeding the damn raccoons. She made her choice. I have enough to deal with.

Honey is still not sleeping with me. This morning before eight, I found her curled up against the wall outside my room, and grabbed her. She must have been sleepy enough not to care, because she stayed with me and for ten minutes we had a good snuggle. Then I made the mistake of petting her and thanking her for staying, and that must have woken her up enough to realize where she was. She ran away.

So I'm pretty angry with her, too. I give her turkey and everything, and she's not doing her job!