Jekyll's view on the end of the world

Not a problem, really. Whatever.

This is why we can't have nice things

Tears were shed. That's all I want to say about that.

The cat brought the tree down, of course. I wasn't in the room so I don't know what he did, but I don't think he'll ever do it again.

So yes, I was foolish to put the glass ornaments on the tree, but look on the bright side: most of them broke so now I don't have to worry about them breaking. Also, fewer ornaments to put up after Christmas.

Some of the ornaments that broke were very old, but some of the oldest ornaments came through without a scratch, like the porcelain bells that belonged to my great-grandmother* (and which I have moved to the mantel now). I guess they've been through toddlers, dogs, and cats before. Likewise, the tree is fine. It's made of wood and aluminum so it's pretty much indestructible unless you actually set it on fire. And I hid the matches so Jekyll couldn't do that.

The clean-up was not fun, especially since I was sobbing hysterically. I mean come on, who wouldn't? But as I swept and mopped and mopped again to get all the glass up, I contemplated the ephemeral nature of Christmas and glass ornaments, and reminded myself that it's just stuff. If the whole house had burnt down (it won't; I hid the matches, remember?) it would still be just stuff I'd lost. The memories live inside me.

It still wasn't any fun to clean up. But the floor is really clean now. And the tree is up again, although I need to do a better job distributing the remaining ornaments because it's kind of lopsided. Also, I will have to get the boxes of ornaments out of the garage again because there were a lot of them that wouldn't fit on my little tree, and now they will.

*or my mom found them in an antique store, hard to remember

Welcome to December

I put the tree up last Sunday. I was cleaning that room anyway and thought, "What the hell, it's time." I had considered not putting up a tree at all this year, but I suspect that would have made me even sadder. I did do some crying while I decorated, but was fortunately distracted by Jekyll investigating everything. He didn't try to treat the tree or the decorations as cat toys, just batted at them a few times and sniffed them, so I put the glass ornaments on. So far none of them are broken.

Here's a picture of Jekyll and the tree. I wasn't done decorating it at this point; it's even more loaded with shinies now.

Yesterday I crossed the finished line of NaNo with just over 50,000 words! I finished Wharf Rat entirely and wrote 8,000 words on Adventures in Zoology, getting me very close to the end. I'm going to try to finish Adventures in Zoology by the end of December, which will mean I wrote two books entirely and finished writing three this year.

Next year? My next project will be YA, as high concept as I can make it. I've got to start selling books, not just because it's just ridiculous to me that I haven't broken through yet despite all the effort I put into writing and improving, but also because--to be blunt--I'd like to keep my house. I don't make a lot of money in my day job and I never expected I'd need to pay the mortgage alone. So in 2013 I've got to be commercial and practical. Suggestions for high-concept, whizbang, this-has-never-been-done-before-yet-somehow-it's-very-similar-to-things-that-sell-well YA plots welcome.

Halloween is over

Another Halloween is over, and another NaNoWriMo is about to begin. Hopefully I'll get some sleep in between.

I made a complicated costume that actually turned out really well, considering that in the end it was mostly held together with safety pins. I don't have a long mirror so I couldn't get a decent picture, but here are two pix I did get in the bathroom mirror. The shiny is the batwing cape I made from some gorgeous lacy cloth.

Oh, and I got pizza on the way home from work.

Jekyll wore a costume too. It came with a little hat but the costume was made for dogs and the hat wouldn't fit. He didn't mind the collar, at least. Jekyll is shy, but as the evening progressed he got to the point that he didn't freak out so much when kids came to the door. Sometimes he'd even stay in the living room, and all the kids commented on him.

One little girl asked what I was supposed to be dressed as. I said, "An evil queen who didn't have time to fix her hair."

Incidentally, I made a lot of effort to find unusual candy. The lollipops with plastic skeleton arms as sticks were a huge hit, as were the gummy mummies. My personal favorite was the plastic vampire teeth that came with a little pouch of candy blood. How cool is that? I made sure to give them to older kids, not toddlers.

The house looked particularly good, if I do say so myself.

The cold weather kept a lot of kids away, unfortunately, and I have a bunch of candy left over. I plan to take it to work tomorrow. The last thing I need during NaNo is candy to graze on while I type.

2 a.m. A crash!

I woke from a sound sleep at two this morning with the sound of a metallic crash still reverberating in my ears. Naturally I assumed the cat had knocked something over, and since I was scared I reacted by yelling several obscenities really loudly, because ghosts are scared of yelling.

Then I got up and turned on all the lights.

Jekyll was in the hallway outside my bedroom, his tail fluffed up and his eyes big and round.

These are my thoughts, as near as I can remember them:
It's a ghost.
No, a neighbor cat must have jumped onto the outside of a window and scared Jekyll.
But what made the noise?
Is someone trying to get into the house?
I'd better look outside.

I went to the front door and peered out, then turned on the porch light and peered out some more. Nothing stirred in the yard.

Then I turned around and saw that part of a plastic "FOR SALE BY OWNER" sign had fallen out of the capped chimney and onto the electric heater that sits in the fireplace, along with a lot of soot and cinders.

I don't know what a FOR SALE BY OWNER sign was doing in my chimney. I didn't put it there. The chimney was capped something like ten years ago when the house was remodeled, long before I moved in, and presumably the cut-down sign was used to block off something up there. There's no flue in the chimney anymore and, of course, the chimneytop itself has a metal cover over it, although there are ports in the cover's sides, presumably for ventilation.

The wind gusted outside, making the house creak gently. Then I heard scrabbling in the chimney.

I pictured a sooty and furious, probably rabid, raccoon leaping down from the chimney and attacking my face. So I banged on the heater and yelled more obscenities, and the sounds stopped. I waited a long time and didn't hear anything but the wind, and there wasn't a draft from the chimney so hopefully the FOR SALE BY OWNER sign wasn't blocking off something important. I cleaned up the soot and cinders, threw the sign away, and turned off all but one living room lamp.

Then I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling, listening tensely, for the next four hours.

Further details if any come up.

Edit: I left the house a while ago to run down to the post office, and three young raccoons and what I initially thought was a white cat ran from my side yard across the street. About the time I realized the "cat" was an albino raccoon, they were gone and I wasn't able to get a picture. But, you know, mystery solved. They were probably fighting crime.

I am a headache

I have a ferocious headache, one second away from deserving the name migraine, so I will just chunk these updates out and then go to bed.

The bird, alas, is dead. I didn't think he would survive; the fact that he lived two weeks still amazes me. I wish he'd died before I spent all that money on the big cage. Then again, once I get the cage disinfected, I may just get a couple of pet finches. My brother and I had zebra finches when we were little. They were boring but cute pets.

It has been quite hot lately.

I finished writing Shadow Trail yesterday! It's about 53,000 words long and I've already done one quick revision pass. There's a lot to be said for writing to a strict (if malleable) outline. The pacing in this one is excellent, if I do say so myself, although I will probably tinker with the ending to make it more exciting. Next I'm going to outline Wharf Rat, the project I started in May. I'm more likely to finish books that I've outlined, and I'm more likely to finish them faster and better. So outlining it is for the next few projects.

Happy late Canada Day and early Fourth of July. I'm going to bed.

New birdcage is a pain in the butt

I finally got a bigger birdcage for Toothless the Hysterical Robin the finch, who is still breathing but still can't fly. It's a much bigger birdcage. Jekyll, who is not a small cat, decided to take a look at it while I was putting the perches in.

The bottom was mesh and I worried that the bird would catch his little legs in it, so I covered it with paper instead. When I was done, the cage looked awesome. It has two dowel perches it came with, and I added three natural-branch perches (from the yard). I also put in the swing that came with the little original cage, and tied a millet spray from the roof so that it dangles down to the bottom of the cage. While I was working on it, I was all excited at the thought that maybe the bird would be able to hop along the branches and would be interested in eating some of the seed off the millet spray. He might even make it up to the swing!

And then I put the bird in the cage, and he flopped around frantically trying to get purchase on the slick paper. When I took the paper out, he promptly fell on his back and got both wings stuck through the bottom mesh. I put him back in his old cage.

Then I got the wire cutters* and carefully removed the bottom panel of the cage. Because this compromised the cage's integrity, I used zip ties to anchor all the corners together. Then I poured a bunch of the corn cob bedding that goes everywhere into the bottom of the cage, replaced the food and water containers, added the food and water containers from the old cage, and installed the extra water dispenser I bought. I want to make sure the bird doesn't have to travel far to find food or water. The more energy he can conserve, the faster he'll heal.

I put the bird in the new cage. He flapped around for a while, then sat down to sulk. Oh well. He sure looks more comfortable to me.

*This translates to "Then I drove out to Walmart and bought some wire cutters."

In which I bore everyone talking about the bird

The bird is ALIVE. Yeah, seriously. He's like Indestructo-Bird. I was going to name him Robin but I think his name should actually be Hysterical, because he is. Even finches bred for hundreds of years as cage birds don't really get tame. This finch is a true wild bird. He does not like having me around him.

It looks like I'm going to have him around for a while. In fact, I hate to say this--since for one thing, it's illegal to keep wild birds as pets, not that I want to--but even if he lives I may not be able to release him. His tail is definitely broken so he can't fly although his wings are okay. It's hard to tell about his legs, but I'm not sure he can actually use both of them. They don't look broken, so I suspect he may have the bird equivalent of paralyzation from the waist down. If he can't fly and he can't perch, he can't survive in the wild.

I went to the pet store today to look at bigger cages. I liked one of them, which was roomy and wider than it is tall, with a mesh floor instead of the solid plastic floor my current cage has. But it was $60. I'm not quite ready to spend that much on a bird that might still die. So I didn't get him a cage, just some freeze-dried, shredded vegetables meant for finches; when I opened the bag, it smelled so good I wanted to stick my face in and graze.

AND I GOT JEKYLL A COLLAR. With a bell. When he goes outside, he has to wear the collar. I wasn't sure how he would react, but I think he must have worn a collar at some point in his pre-stray life. He didn't fuss even while I was adjusting the fit. It's a black collar with glow-in-the-dark moons on it, and he's very handsome wearing it. When he comes back in, I take the collar off. I'd hate to have him catch it on something and strangle himself while I'm at work.

Another thing I did today as a direct result of having a hysterical bird in my room was change my mattress out for the one in the other bedroom. I can't sleep on that other mattress because it's too soft; I prefer to sleep on a rock with a mattress pad on it. So I swapped the mattresses out and I'm going to use the other bedroom as my bedroom. The bird gets my old bedroom. That way Hysterical Robin gets more alone time, Jekyll can sleep on my bed with me again, and hopefully I'll get more sleep.

The things I do.

Bird Update

The finch is still breathing, although I don't think it'll be for much longer. Poor little bird! Today was the first time I got a decent look at his injury, and...let's just say I won't be posting any pictures. I am astounded that he's lived this long.

I thought about taking him outside tonight to let some critter kill him swiftly, because he's got to be in serious pain. But then I thought, 'well, it's too late for that, let him stay where he's safe and has food and water.' So I am.

I was going to be hysterical about it and sleep on the couch tonight so I wouldn't have to move his cage. Every morning I put his cage on my bed so he can see out the window and get some (indirect, not too hot) sunshine. But I went ahead and moved him back to the dresser so I can sleep in my bed tonight. There's no need to be silly.

I'm probably coming across as awfully callous, but I've been through this too often with hurt birds to get emotionally invested. If it was Jekyll, I'd be miserable. Then again, if it was Jekyll, I'd have taken him to the vet. Wild birds don't get a vet trip, they just get a chance to heal in a safe place.

Now I have to go back to writing Shadow Trail, which is 35,000 words long and nearing Act 3 and the big finale. I'm not going to have enough plot to make it to 60,000 words as I'd planned. But if I can make it to 50,000 I think it'll be okay for a younger YA.

It's a bird! It's a...okay, yeah, it's a bird.

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting right here at my computer, as usual, when Jekyll the cat came in to tell me something. He was very insistent, so I got up and followed him to the bathroom across the hall.

There he had left me a little gift, a house finch (maybe a purple finch? I can't tell the difference) he had caught. It wasn't dead, which put me in a terrible position. I mean, yes, cats kill little animals and birds; it's just one of those things they do, although Jekyll hasn't shown any skill at it until now. And yes, it was sweet that he had brought it inside to give to me. But it wasn't dead. And it was fluttering around pathetically in the bathroom, trying to fly away, and Jekyll was showing every sign of wanting to play with it some more.

I scooped the bird up and took it outside, and sat next to it for a few minutes to see if it would recover or die. It sat there, refusing to stop breathing. I thought about leaving it there, but I knew another critter would just come along and kill it if I did. So I went inside, got one of the cat's little bowls (irony!) and half-filled it with some oat seeds that I bought to grow so the cat has greens to nibble on. Then I went back out, caught the terrified bird, and plopped him in the bowl to use as a nest.

I left him shut in my room for about an hour. I fully expected him to be dead when I returned. But when I checked on him...he was gone. Vanished in a small bedroom. It took me a good twenty minutes to find him hiding behind the curtain. I returned him to the bowl/nest and went out to buy a cage.

Thirty bucks later, the bird was in a nice little temporary cage with finch seed and water and deep bedding made of ground-up corncobs (although I probably should have just used newspaper; the corncob stuff is already everywhere). I draped a very sheer scarf over the cage to make him feel more secure without smothering him, and went to bed (cat shut out of the room, of course; he was not happy).

The bird was still alive this morning and ate some of the seed. So maybe he'll survive. I've never had any luck nursing injured birds back to health, though. They always die. I think this one has a broken tailbone and one of his legs may be injured too. He can only hitch around awkwardly, can't stand properly, and can't fly properly. His wings appear uninjured, though. If he makes it through a week, I think I can keep him alive until his tail mends. I'll keep everyone posted.

Oh, and Jekyll...geez, I dunno what to do with him. Catching mice, yes, I want him to do that. Birds, no. Hopefully this was a fluke.

The Ugliest Kitten in the World

Well, she's not. Not the ugliest kitten in the world, that is. She's not my kitten, either; she belongs to the granddaughter of a friend of my mom's, the same woman who gave me Jekyll, who comes over to visit Jekyll (and me) occasionally. Tonight she brought the kitten.

<--I would like to reassure everyone that she is playing with a toy fish. Not a toy anything else. Just FYI.

I think the kitten's gorgeous. If I didn't already have Jekyll, and if it didn't require stealing a kitten from a little girl, I'd have kept her. She's a dark calico with a light gray undercoat, which makes her look like she's been rolling in soot, and her eyes are a remarkable dark amber--almost as brown as a dog's eyes.

So there it is: beauty is as subjective as anything else. Here is a picture of Jekyll too so he won't get jealous.

Three Pictures Make a Post

I had some pictures on my camera that I just processed. They have nothing to do with anything. The first is my supper last night, which was catfish. Very good catfish! I picked it up at our little local store because I suspected it was probably locally caught, and I think I was right. It was certainly very fresh fish. I couldn't eat it all, but I sure tried.

 

My recipe for pan-fried catfish: Mix about 1/2 cup cornmeal with 1 tsp cayenne pepper and 1 tsp paprika, some fresh-ground pepper, and a little bit of salt in a big, fairly shallow bowl or pan. Pour maybe 1/4 c olive oil into a frying pan and heat. Mince two cloves of garlic and put into the oil. Rinse catfish fillets, shake off most of the water, and press into the cornmeal mixture until each fillet is covered on both sides. Place fillets into frying pan on top of garlic. Cook six or seven minutes on each side until flaky and cooked through, and salt a little bit whenever you flip the fillets. Squirt lots of fresh lemon over the fillets just before eating. Yum.

The next picture is Jekyll sitting on the pergola, taunting me. I did finally figure out he can get down by himself. He drives me crazy sometimes.

And finally, I found these little copper thingies on etsy and bought them--they were only a few bucks in all, including shipping. I don't know what to do with them but I love looking at them. They are so little and perfect.

Bedmaking

Jekyll the cat decided to keep me busy today by puking all over the guest bed. When I stripped the quilt and blanket off, I discovered the sheets on it were still flannel. While I washed the bedding, I put fresh cotton sheets on the bed (I make that bed because it looks funny with just a quilt, and I'm in that room all the time since the computer's in there).

Then I looked in the mirror and discovered that my conjunctivitis was much worse. My right eye looked horrible! Rather than wait a day to call the doctor and get an appointment for later in the week, I decided I'd better go to a walk-in clinic that was open on Sunday. I found one in West Knoxville and waited an hour (reading, of course) to see a doctor for about three minutes. The doctor didn't say much; in fact, I got the distinct impression that if it were up to him, he'd be in bed sleeping off his hangover. He looked in my eyes, listened (presumably) to my nervous babbling about symptoms, and prescribed me antibiotic eyedrops.

When I got home, I thought I might as well wash the sheets on my bed. So I did. I did three loads of laundry today and feel like I've been making beds constantly. Tip taught me by my grandmother: put the top sheet on upside-down; that way when you turn the bed down, the sheet pattern shows.

So I have a clean bed to look forward to tonight, and I don't have to worry about whether I should see a doctor about my eye, and I know--because they weighed me at the doctor's--that my home scale is accurate. Unfortunately.

Also, I had to clean all the stuff off the bed, which I needed to do anyway. Jekyll is pleased with his clean new bed.

Staying up late

My Goodreads giveaway had 1,401 entries! My God! One of those people won, and I've shipped the book off to her. One thousand four hundred and one entries. Wow.

The cat is demolishing one of his jingle-balls (the one with the feather, I think) in the living room and I'm still up because I'm waiting for the dishwasher to finish so I can start the washing machine. Tomorrow is Easter. I think I'll walk down by the river and think about things.

I hope the weather is pleasant wherever you are. I hope everything is as good as can be expected. I hope you have a good book to read.

It's a pergola!

I have a weird work schedule anyway, but this week it was even weirder than usual--but that's good, because it meant that I got off work on Friday at 10:30am and then had the whole weekend free! Friday was chilly and rainy, so I went and saw a movie (John Carter of Mars, or whatever it's called; it was fun).

Saturday dawned beautifully sunny and warm, so I opened a gallon of exterior semi-gloss white paint and decided it was time to paint the front railing. So I did. It was honestly a perfect spring morning: birds singing, sun beaming, a light breeze fluttering my hair, people walking by with their dogs calling greetings to me. By the time I'd finished painting the railing, it had dried, so I went back and did a second coat.


So then I went around and painted part of the back porch, but didn't do all of it because I decided it was time to paint the pergola.

I didn't know what a pergola was until we bought this house. It's a open trellis that doesn't have a roof, and of course the house has one. It's old and needs repair and/or replacement of many of the beams, and it badly needed painting. So I got out the stepladder and got to work.

I started painting the railing at about 9:15 am. By the time I ran out of paint while working on the pergola, it was a quarter until two. I took a shower, changed clothes, and went back out and washed and waxed my car. Because apparently I get my energy from the sun like flowers do. And I mowed the front lawn (badly).

I finished painting the pergola today and finished the first coat on the back porch, which looks very nice but will have to wait for its second coat at least a week because it's going to rain rain rain all week long. I also repainted the white adirondack chairs in the front of the house. And I have a sunburn, a strained muscle in my arm, a full-body crick in my neck, and so much paint left on my skin I look like I have leprosy. But by god the house looks great!

More pictures, including a bonus Jekyll pic:

The pergola. Disregard the clutter underneath it, which I need to rearrange (and some of it goes on the back porch but is not on it currently while the paint dries).

The back of the pergola, by the garage:

The back porch. Once the second coat is on and dry, the red chairs go back on the porch:

And finally, Jekyll the cat who wishes I would play with him instead of painting constantly:

Enter the Jekyll

Okay, let's try this cat thing again.

Actually, it's obvious me and Jekyll are going to be fast friends. He's much more outgoing than the little gray cat, and he seems to like me, and he's adjusted very well to living with me. Of course, he probably feels like he's in cat heaven now--before, he was sharing a house with eight other cats.

His name is Jekyll because he's sweet as can be to people, but bullies other cats. Since I'm not a cat, I'm not worried. The worst thing he does is grab me around the ankles in the mornings before I'm dressed. And that just reminds me to get dressed earlier instead of shuffling around in my nightgown.

...And there she goes.

Okay, so after nearly two days with me (well, two days and one night), the little gray cat still hadn't eaten anything, or drunk anything, or used the litterbox (or the floor, although I'm not so sure about that part). She spent the entire day while I was at work hiding under my bed, as far as I can tell, and I spent the entire day worrying about her.

So when I got home and realized she was making herself sick rather than deal with the move to a new home, I called her former owner and asked if she could take her back. And thank heavens, she did. I feel guilty about this, but on the other hand the woman has another cat (actually, she has ten) that is more outgoing and needs a good home. So she took the little gray cat back tonight--and the cat is thrilled to get back to her person--and Wednesday night she's bringing the other cat over.

It's a cat swap. Like a cookie swap, but with more claws.

So now I feel guilty and sad, because she was a sweet little cat. But I am not really emotionally prepared to deal with a neurotic animal right now. We'll see how the other cat does. Probably a good thing I didn't get a dog, huh?

Here she is!

She's been hiding since I got her at 9am this morning, but she's letting me pet her as long as I lean over the couch and stretch my arm down to touch her without her actually moving. I got a picture of her with the flash. She didn't even jump.

She's about two years old and very shy. I think we'll get along just fine once she decides to come out from behind the furniture. The house is full of cat toys.

No dog. Cat.

You know how if you've been reading one author's books for an extended period of time (in my case, ten days) and no other books, and then you finish the last one, it's hard to imagine reading anything else by any other author? That's me right now. I finished the last Mike Carey book and can't settle to anything else.

In totally unrelated news, I'm getting a cat instead of a dog. I'd actually told my coworker that I couldn't possibly take care of a dog right now, so whatever synchronicity was gearing up in that area got cut off. Then a friend of my mother's asked if I could take in her dad's cat after he died, and I said I would. She's going to bring the cat over this weekend.

There will be pictures.

Twitter is down, I need to natter

So, I may be getting a dog. I'm not pushing either way about this, but it's kind of weird how it worked out so if I get the dog, I'll figure it was Meant To Be and if I don't get the dog, I won't get a dog at all. Not yet, anyway.

Friday afternoon at work I found my thoughts meandering, as they do (usually at work), and I remembered that before I got my Newfoundland dog Jasper, who died at the end of 2008, I was thinking about getting a standard poodle. I don't know why it popped into my head then, but I thought about it for a while and thought, "Well, I can't get a dog now because I'm not home enough. Maybe in the future when my work schedule changes and I don't have to be gone over twelve hours every Tuesday."

Saturday at work I mentioned in passing to my coworker that I was thinking of getting a dog eventually. "What kind?" he asked me, and I said, "A poodle. One of the big standard poodles, not a little one."

And he said, "My sister-in-law has a standard poodle she might need a home for soon."

What are the odds? Anyway, the dog in question is a girl not quite one year old, with a good personality and a brown-tipped white coat, but who is driving her owner wild with her puppyish way of chewing everything to pieces. I remember when Jasper went through his final adolescent chewing phase. He liked to destroy hardback books. But after about six months he pretty much stopped chewing entirely except for chew toys and treats.

So I may get a dog. If it works out. If I do, I'll have to figure out what to do with the dog on Tuesdays.