I found a stray kitten with big, aquamarine eyes rimmed with gold and a fuzzy orange coat. He was starving – so skinny that I could feel his entire skeletal structure when I picked him up. He was very timid, to the point of being suspicious of the bowl of milk I put down. I’m relieved to say he’s since been cured of both conditions. Now he’s a chubby blaze of color, zipping around furniture & tottering sideways as he’s not so sure-footed yet.

Luna hates him, of course. Because for three years she’s reigned supreme, lazing in sun spots and hogging the bed. Besides which she can never make anything simple. He got brave enough to tip-toe up to her in a misguided attempt to make friends and she responded by rearing back in a move that could’ve been kitty Taekwando and opening her jaws as far as they would go before emitting a deadly hiss. He spent the next few minutes curled into a motionless ball, lest she eat his head.

After much deliberation, I named him Archimedes. And now you’re thinking, why would she name an overly friendly kitten after a Greek scientist? And to that I say, I didn’t. I named him after the owl in the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone (who actually may have been named after the Greek scientist), because it appeals to my perverse sense of humor to name a cat after a bird. Anyway, I’ve always loved that movie, and the owl was one of my favorite characters. And okay, I really like how the name sounds.

Pictures will be added shortly, and this time I MEAN IT. Very soon there will be fuzzy orange goodness displayed on this page. Disclaimer: He’s so tiny & adorable your brain might explode, for which I accept zero responsibility.

I’ve known her since I was thirteen. We’ve been friends – best friends – since our first slumber party, where we bonded over a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Nintendo game (SO nerdy) and stayed up until dawn giggling in our sleeping bags. We were thisclose in high school, we lived together in college, and then kept living together when college fell through. She helped me through unspeakable grief and made me laugh until my sides ached on several occasions. I like to think I’ve been there for her as well.

We live in separate places now, miles apart, and we lead separate lives. We have different religions, values, & temperaments. She isn’t interested in dating or getting married, but plans to adopt a baby. I want a real relationship, but have a difficult time imagining myself as anyone’s mother. She’s introverted and reserved, I’m extroverted and flamboyant (obnoxiously so). Despite our many differences, we somehow stayed connected over the years.

She’s angry at me. I was honest about feeling estranged lately, and it hurt her feelings. The absolute last thing I want is for her to be hurt, especially by me. But I wasn’t careless. I was as gentle and tactful as possible – I reheared countless times to make sure I wasn’t accidently an asshole (a recurring affliction of mine).

She hung up on me. I didn’t say what I said to drive a wedge further into our friendship – I said it because I want to fix things. I didn’t call her back. If she needs time she can take it. We always hash things out eventually.

I am starting to wonder if I should’ve just kept my big mouth shut. Maybe I should have just let days lapse between emails & phone calls, just gradually let the issue take care of itself. Maybe that would be less painful, for both of us.

Or maybe she’ll call me tomorrow, and we’ll talk, and none of this will matter. I’m hoping it becomes trivial, something we can laugh about later. But it doesn’t feel trivial. It feels broken.

Remember way back when, about two YEARS ago, when I mentioned that I was feeling ambivalent about religion – most specifically, the religion I was raised to believe is truth? (That would be Christianity).

I said that rather than swallow everything I’d been told as absolute, without any pesky questions, that I intended to research a variety of religions before deciding on anything. I’m finally getting around to it.

Accidentally, as it turns out.

I bought a book called ‘When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times’. I was expecting some sage advice about keeping my shit together, NOT an intriguing set of ideas from a Buddhist nun – but that’s what I got.

The book starts by encouraging intimacy with fear, because ‘fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth’. I’m not sure that’s completely true. Sometimes, fear can be a natural reaction to moving closer to a speeding vehicle, or a very high, unstable ledge. However, I understand the context to which the author is referring.

So far, the most interesting theme I’ve found is that chaos is considered joyful, a preferred state of being. (Believe me when I tell you it took me a while to wrap my small, narrow mind around THAT one). The idea is that only after everything falls apart, only after you have nothing left, do you find out who you are and what you’re really capable of. (Not exactly a NEW concept, but it was eloquently written, dammit).

Buddhism encourages people to accept things as they are – the good AND the bad – and then to let them go. Greet everything as it is, appreciate it for what it is, and then release it. This is starting to sound vaguely hokey (a recurring thought I had while reading the book), but the more I consider it the more I like it. If you just accept that bad things are bound to happen, embrace them and let them go, it doesn’t seem quite as disappointing when they do happen. (See also: cynicism).

I’m not finished with the book yet, and I’ll definitely have more thoughts/comments by then, but so far the material presented has been fascinating. Now then, I’m off to reverse all of my spiritual reflection by enjoying the third season of ‘Dexter’.

My head feels like a bowling ball roasting in an oven.

A dear friend, a dirty, disease-ridden HOOKER gave me her cold. Her nasty, dripping, throbbing cold. On top of said cold, I’m battling a fever. I’m so full of mucus right now that I bet if you squeezed me a little bit I’d pop like an overly ripe zit on the face of a fourteen-year-old boy.

That’s not to say my day wasn’t productive. Despite being sick & miserable, I accomplished quite a lot. Such as:

- After arriving home early from the lake (where my friends & all the fun live), I slept from about 10:30 AM to 4:00 PM.
- I drank eighteen zillion (or so) cups of hot tea & honey. Note: When it’s ninety degrees outside, hot tea isn’t as soothing as one might think.
- I used & abused 1 full box of tissues.
- I then replaced the liner in the bathroom trash can.
- I wrote (and afterward deleted) one very nasty letter to the FDA for recalling Zicam – everyone KNOWS it was the one drug that actually worked on colds, and who the hell are they to decide whether or not I want to endanger my sense of smell? Fuckers.
- I read about half of Bright Lights, Big Ass by Jen Lancaster. For future reference, gut-busting laughter isn’t so great for aching head colds.
- I stretched out in bed in the sweet, sticky dark from 8:30 PM to 11:00 PM.
- I fought for bed space with Tubby McKitterson – it’s hard to believe one 9lb cat can actually cover HALF of a queen-sized bed, but when I delicately broached the subject by trying to push her to the floor I got a warning to BACK OFF by way of a set of claws sinking ever-so-lightly into my exposed boob flesh (yes, I was naked, it was NINETY DEGREES and I haven’t got air conditioning).

Now I’m at work, armed with a bottle of throat spray and a roll of toilet paper. Cough drop donations are welcome.

Two nights ago, I got into my car to drive home from work. The obvious first step is to turn on the lights – even someone with my total lack of knowledge about driving/automobiles knows that. So I did. Except the dash lights didn’t come on. I had to use my imagination to put the car in gear, and then my judgment (HA!) where speed was concerned.

I pondered the problem on the way home, came to no solid conclusions, and decided to drop by and see the mechanic in the morning.

I completely forgot, until the next evening when I was trying to drive home from work. I grumbled to myself, wrote down my plans to visit the mechanic, and went to bed.

Today I was on my way to have whatever badness was lurking under the hood fixed when I spotted my brother coming out of his office and decided, by chance, to get his opinion first. The tipping point, of course, being a free fix as opposed to a potentially expensive one.

He was already grinning from ear to ear as I described the problem, as he swaggered outside to see for himself. It’s never good when Paul is that self-satisfied and amused. It means BAD things for my end, let me tell you.

I watched with mounting embarrassment as he pulled open the driver’s side door, leaned in, and FLIPPED THE DIMMER SWITCH. I was frantically thinking of the best way to salvage my dignity when he shot it all to hell by saying, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t take it to the mechanic?”

YES. The more I thought about it – imagining myself explaining and probably leaving my car overnight (odds of them getting to it right away being dicey), only to have them LAUGH me out of the garage because I’d done my job fulfilling every stereotype about females known to man, and why didn’t I just break a goddamn nail while I was at it? – the more relieved I was that I went to Paul first.

STILL. My ego suffered. A dimmer switch. Who would have thought? NOT ME. Obviously.

I should start by saying that my best friend B continually amazes me. She’s married. She has a baby boy who just turned two and a baby girl who’s pushing the six month mark. Added to her responsibilities as a wife and mother, she manages a kitchen in a hospital, where she treats her employees very well – even in situations where I would have long ago eaten their heads. She not only handles the various aspects of her life, she does it with grace and panache. The woman isn’t just my standard for good mothering, she’s my standard for goodness in general.

Now then. We all lose our shit sometimes. B isn’t perfect, as evidenced by her BLATANT ATTEMPT TO KILL ME AND THE BACKSEAT PASSENEGRS on a recent trip to the city.

She had to take her baby girl to the pediatrician, and she invited me along because we always have more fun in the city than we should be allowed to. Everything was going swimmingly – we took Izzie for her checkup, we supported the local mall (Note: we ALWAYS support the local mall. The two of us are very possibly the reason it’s done well enough to do so much upgrading lately). We agreed to have lunch at Chili’s, where I drooled over the interior style as well as my cajun chicken pasta.

B is the sort of person who doesn’t usually discuss her frustrations or problems. I don’t take it personally; she’s just a self-contained, stuff-a-cork-in-it kind of person. Which I can relate to on some levels. HOWEVER. Sometimes, it’s better to spit it the fuck out than to randomly decide that the yellow light HALF A BLOCK AWAY isn’t slowing you down.

That’s right. She didn’t so much as tap the break. I wish I could say the same for the gas pedal. One minute I was going on about something, and the next we were lurching forward at previously unmet speeds. I glanced over while instictively bracing myself and noticed that B had a vice-like hold on the wheel and a gleam in her eye. I looked to the backseat, where Brady (a toddler and therefore old enough to fear for his life like any SANE human being) was sporting a mile-wide grin. Just like his mother, that one. God save us all.

It all happened in a matter of maybe two or three seconds, and the next thing I knew we were flying through the red light, PRACTICALLY AIR BORN – Dukes of Hazzard style – thanks to the bump where we WOULD have been stopping for traffic if B hadn’t wanted to watch me struggle not to pee my pants.

I stared over at her, my mouth agape in what I’m certain was a very attractive manner. Evidently my expression was saying something like, “WHAT IN THE EVER LOVING FUCK?” Because this is what she said, with a mild glance sideways:

“I didn’t want to stop.”

NO KIDDING.