You Can Skip This Post

No, really. I won't be offended. This is a maudlin post full of bad photos and it's definitely an exercise in self-indulgence.

Though those of you who've been around awhile may appreciate this FB post from my brother:




Cat for Scale ceased to exist on this mortal coil April 8. He was 21, he was euthanised and he never had a health problem or a noticeable ache or pain until the last two weeks of his life. In fact, the many scans and prods and sucks and bleeds and samples and tests yielded nothing.

He just couldn't stand up reliably anymore.

He didn't eat more than a couple of tablespoons of food a day.

He had no interest in kitty treats.

He didn't even have any interest in my dinner.

He spent all day in a kitty bed. I'm going to take it as a testament to his love for me that he hauled his poor little body upstairs for a couple of nights - even though he could hardly walk on flat ground - to curl up next to me.

After that, I carried him up to my bed every night and down to his bed every morning.

It broke my heart to see my sweet, dopey old companion laid low by perversions of age and time like that. I know deep, deep down - so far it's just an abstract batch of words - that it was a mercy and a matter of dignity to put him to sleep.

But I can't shake the feeling to this day that I somehow failed him.

He was the least photogenic cat I've ever seen. That didn't stop me from trying, nor is it going to stop me from collecting all my old Cat for Scale blogphotos here.

Look at him:

He looked stoned...








...or startled...





...or asleep...












...often looking the wrong way...










...rarely in action...








...but always For Scale.






Now I wish I'd taken more pictures.









Thank you for letting me indulge.

Big Day

Sylvia's Last Stand

Sylvia's House of Fuzzy Crack is no more. The last truck took its last load this morning.

Posh will forever be the place I found knitters. People to knit with. Social knitting. Competitive knitting. Supportive knitting. Showing off knitting.




Women who can always be counted on to ooh and aah over Nathan's package.†

[SUMMARY: It's fibrelicious!‡]

Posh will forever be the place I learned about mail order chickens§ from Marybeth.




Without Posh, I might still be knitting endless scarves every football season¶... and endless baby blankets in the spaces in between.

I might never have met Bonnie# or Kate†† or Leslie...




...or (gods forbid) Genius Sarah. Who would hit me on the arm and say, "I have a question," all the way through baseball playoffs and untangle my yarn for me when I got too eager and couldn't wait until I got home to winder and swift and muddled it all up at Drunken Knitting?




Or Meg. Meg of the Mini Cooper and the motorcycle and the intense, funny intelligence. Or Heather, whose baby shower continued my knack for walking in on big, happy Posh parties.




Or Leslie, self-professed skincare whore and funny, erudite knitting writer.




Or Natalie, who makes me spit wine out my nose laughing.




Or Liza-Spelled-Lisa who accidentally got married, then accidentally adopted a second child.




Or Rosie who loves perfume, or Ligia who is an Capital-E-Educator and lives around the corner from me.




[SUMMARY: These are the people in my neighbourhood.‡‡]

It's the end of a soft, many-plied, colourful, beautiful era.

XOXOXOXO, Sylvia. It'll be sad knowing I can't just drop by on a random Friday afternoon.

See you around.

[SUMMARY: *sniffle*]

Don't ask how much I spent at the moving sale.


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Oh, look what I did. Now he feels violated and I feel twelve. heheheheheh

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): And I'm not just talking about Nathan's package.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Thus continues the Summer of the Chickens. By the way, Marybeth says the chickens would, indeed, look fetching in sweater vests, but if we want to knit them we have to do it fast -- and I'm guessing not get too attached to the results -- because the chicks have already doubled in size.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): College boyfriends, high school friends, roommates... nobody was safe from the annual football scarf, twelve feet long, double-thick and ten inches wide. heheheheh. Sorry... had a moment.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Who is new, but noteworthy and has, in fact, cut her hair since this photo (just in case you see her around town).

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Who talks more than I do and gets captioned in the footnotes for it.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Y'know... my *spiritual* neighbourhood. The family you choose. The next-door neighbours of my soul. People who certainly deserve better photography than I've given them here.

I Hate This Time of Year

Every day when I wake up and realise she's not here, I still can't imagine how I will possibly make it to the next day. Dad can get a new wife. I'll never have another Mom.

Easy Like Sunday Morning...

...and on into the night.^

Since we all but stopped celebrating Halloween and New Year's Eve,† the Super Bowl is the Grand Poobah of all parties, the laissez le bon temps roulette‡ of the social season.

That's Brother and Eric, laissezing le bon temps roulette



To refresh your memory, we have been doing this at Matt's house since before he was married.% Next year will be our 20th anniversary.§ It's a wonder we all lived through past Super Bowl parties to reach this milestone.¶

[SUMMARY: C'est la guerre... and it has been a hell of a guerre.]

We have traditions.

We have the National Anthem Chug.# We have jello shots.†† We have cigars.‡‡ We have the Lonely Guy Hour.§§ And we have Matt wearing alternative headgear.¶¶

Matt and Shanny - two of my favourite guys in the world


Matt and Bill##


Matt and Connie



[SUMMARY: Fiddler on the Roof got nothin' on us.]

I may never have mentioned it, but as an oil brat,††† we moved like the military when I was a kid. At least every three years, whether we needed it or not. Brother went from first grade through high school with the same kids. I went to seven different elementary schools.‡‡‡

The people you see in the pictures above have been my friends for nearly 30 years.§§§ To me, that's really something.

[SUMMARY: Awwwww...]

And the fact that we're all still alive I think proves miracles happen.¶¶¶

Saint points?###


^FOOTNOTE (careted): I am NOT easy. Anymore.

†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Damned kids.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): A reminder: Lent is just around the corner!

%FOOTNOTE (percented): Long live the Elks: Beer, Babes and Brotherhood.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): I will be preparing my special Chex Mix with M&Ms, as always, only I will be using personalised M&Ms with pictures and beer references on them.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Cornflakes in beer for Sunday breakfast, 24-hour Shot Clock (one shot every hour until kick-off), 15-minute war (full contact, drunken football at halftime)...

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Wherein all contestants chug cheap beer (hence the empty Hamm's case prominently displayed in the Matt in the Hat gallery). The idea is ostensibly to start when the anthem starts and finish with the Home of the Brave, only by "by the dawn's early light," it's become a race. When we're done, we throw our cans with mighty force against the nearest available wall.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Amy is now in charge of making Jello shots, which are downed with each score. Or when we want. Now that 'most everybody has kids, we've had to educate them in good Jello and bad Jello (conversation with Dr. Doom: "AntiM, where's the Jello?" "You know you can't have any of that stuff, right?" "Yes, but I just want to SEE it."). The Jello shots were so stout this year, I suggested that if any of the kids scraped a knee, we could slap a Jello shot on the wound, which would both seal it and disinfect it.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Now, now... sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

§§FOOTNOTE (whip that bottle 'round, pass 'er 'round again): Which started as a melodramatic bonding experience amongst the lonely guys (duh). Now the only vestige of the original Lonely Guy Hour is the passing of many, many bottles of many, many colours of Boone's Farm "wine."

¶¶FOOTNOTE (stick men with hats, how appropriate): I feel compelled, since Matt is a school board president, to point out that 1) he did not put the Hamm's hat on his head; someone did that for him, and 2) that is a big ol' cup of water he's drinking in that last photo.

##FOOTNOTE (what IS this number?): Bill's last name is Prince. I put he and Amy in my phone as Prince, which meant I had a weird little interlude months later where I tried to remember why I had Prince's number in my phone -- or why I thought I had Prince's number.

†††FOOTNOTE (three landmen, all in a row): It's not just me. It's congenital. Dad, Brother and I all landman.

‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (a little off track): When I was five, public schools in our city (Midland, Texas) didn't offer kindergarten, so everbody went to private kindergartens. That "seven" doesn't include either the Catholic kindergarten I ended up at (we are not Catholic) nor the kindergarten I got kicked out of.

§§§FOOTNOTE (to everything turn, turn turn): And someone still has the negatives, so I have to be nice.

¶¶¶FOOTNOTE (riot police): Someday I'll tell you about the malatov cocktails and the SWAT team.

###FOOTNOTE (in for a penny, in for three pounds): I graduated from college with 224 credit hours not because I stayed in school for ten years, not because I took classes year-round... no, I graduated with 224 credit hours because I negotiated credit hours for every single thing I did in the four years I was in college -- all my summer jobs, working at the radio station, writing for the newspaper, living behind a laundromat... If anybody's going to weasel out a few extra saint points, it's me.

FOOTNOTES: 609 words
ACTUAL POST: 229 words

Girl Noises

OK, so it's a time of year when there's a lot of sappy to be had. And it's a time of year when I find I want little sap with my morning coffee.

So I got this email...

[SUMMARY: Don't judge.]

...and it's predictable. And sappy. And manipulative and trite and... I teared up a little.†

So I'm posting it here for you. I am NOT getting soft.‡ I'm not preaching.§ It's just there's snow on the ground and lots of Christmas lights and the cat spends his evenings staring into the fire and... I can't not spread the sap.

[SUMMARY: Disclaimers R Us.]

Anyway...

I remember my first Christmas adventure with Grandma. I was just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit her on the day my big sister dropped the bomb: "There is no Santa Claus," she jeered. "Even dummies know that!"

My Grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been.¶ I fled to her that day because I knew she would be straight with me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that the truth always went down a whole lot easier when swallowed with one of her "world-famous" cinnamon buns. I knew they were world-famous, because Grandma said so. It had to be true.

Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me. "No Santa Claus?" she snorted.... "Ridiculous! Don't believe it. That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes me mad, plain mad!! Now, put on your coat, and let's go."

"Go? Go where, Grandma?" I asked. I hadn't even finished my Second World-famous cinnamon bun. "Where" turned out to be Kerby's General Store, the one store in town that had a little bit of just about everything.

As we walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars. That was a bundle in those days.

"Take this money," she said, "and buy something for someone who needs it. I'll wait for you in the car." Then she turned and walked out of Kerby's.

I was only eight years old. I'd often gone shopping with my mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself. The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling to finish their Christmas shopping. For a few moments I just stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for. I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my neighbors, the kids at school, the people who went to my church. I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought of Bobby Decker. He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair, and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock's grade-two class.

Bobby Decker didn't have a coat. I knew that because he never went out to recess during the winter. His mother always wrote a note, telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids knew that Bobby Decker didn't have a cough; he didn't have a good coat. I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I would buy Bobby Decker a coat! I settled on a red corduroy one that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that.

"Is this a Christmas present for someone?" the lady behind the counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down. "Yes, ma'am," I replied shyly. "It's for Bobby." The nice lady smiled at me, as I told her about how Bobby really needed a good winter coat. I didn't get any change, but she put the coat in a bag, smiled again, and wished me a Merry Christmas.

That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat (a little tag fell out of the coat, and Grandma tucked it in her Bible) in Christmas paper and ribbons and wrote, "To Bobby, From Santa Claus" on it. Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy. Then she drove me over to Bobby Decker's house, explaining as we went that I was now and forever officially, one of Santa's helpers.

Grandma parked down the street from Bobby's house, and she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front walk. Then Grandma gave me a nudge. "All right, Santa Claus," she whispered, "get going."

I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the present down on his step, pounded his door and flew back to the safety of the bushes and Grandma. Together we waited breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally it did, and there stood Bobby.

Fifty years haven't dimmed the thrill of those moments spent shivering, beside my Grandma, in Bobby Decker's bushes. That night, I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus were just what Grandma said they were, ridiculous. Santa was alive and well, and we were on his team.

I still have the Bible, with the coat tag tucked inside: $19.95.

Shut up. It's just an eyelash or something. No, I don't need a Kleenex.@

Ah, hell. Let's face it... Christmas is a little better if you can melt by the fire and count your blessings and maybe help a brother out.

[SUMMARY: Bah humbug and happy holidays.]

Here... go play with this and pretend I never got all marshmallowy over a dopey Christmas coat.

Just tell yourself I'm still trying to earn enough saint points for the 2008 campaign.#

*************

Greenbriar 1968†† - CB I Hate Perfume

Marin says: Outdoors. It smells like a fresh spring day in a bucolic location. Cold, wet grass and a touch of mud, leaves and bark, wood, pine.

Something a tiny bit sweet, but not floral -- carmel? Brown sugar? Maple? Too elusive to pin down. Maybe just a sweet wood?

There's also something salty or petroleum -- the sort of thing that usually turns out to be leather, though it may just be the pine, which frequently reads petroleum‡‡ to me.

In any case, I kinda love this. It's so lucidly evocative it's like remembering a dream or a distant memory. I can see the dirt road and the meadow and the woods and the old fence and the lush, lush green of an icy April. Fantastically unisex, too.

CB says: This scent is a memory of my Grandfather, the sawmill that he owned and the stone house where he lived.

It is blended with Sawdust,$ Fresh Cut Hay,$ Worn Leather Work Gloves,$ Pipe Tobacco$ and a healthy amount of Dirt.$ There is also a faint whiff of cotton overalls§§ covered in Axel Grease...¶¶

Hans says: A tree. Like outside. Like a leaf. Grassy! I'm still getting some... basically, if you were to mow the lawn. And mow over a really small pine tree.## Grass and pine mowed together. I really like it.


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): I *said* don't judge.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): When I was 16, Ken La Pear (not quite his real name, but it was what we called him), who was a bombastic windbag that would make Rush Limbaugh look introspective, told me I was sentimental. Whether it was my personal feeling that sentimentality is weak or whether it was just because Ken said so, it pissed me off mightily. Then my best friend Jeff signed my yearbook to, "...one of the smartest, funniest, most creative, but -- above all -- sentimental people I know..." and I seethed a little quieter. It still rubs me the wrong way, though.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): For a wannabe saint, I'm remarkably unpreachy.

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Vis-à-vis the sentimentality question, I like to think Grandma and I have a LOT in common.

@FOOTNOTE (atted): Besides, if you could see the effort it took me to NOT remove a bunch of exclamation points and rearrange some of the grammar and punctuation... you'd realise I haven't lost my edge at all. I'm the same do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do obsessive compulsive weirdo you've always known me to be. No sentiment here. Nuh-uh.

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): It's really all very self-serving. Kim? Softball for you?

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): I figure if Nathan is nice enough to enable my perfume problem, I should be nice enough to tell him which perfume I'm actually smelling. See: yesterday's mystery perfume review.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Just around the edges. If you're skeptical now, just wait until I tell you how similar jasmine and bowling alley ashtray are.

$FOOTNOTE (on the money!): Using the magic Marin system of claiming sawdust and pipe tobacco could be mistaken for wood and conveniently ignoring the fact that I only got a tiny bit of dirt and there appear to be no pine trees involved at all... I nailed it!

§§FOOTNOTE (little ribbons of cotton): Did not get that at all. You know I'm going to be up half the night trying to smell cotton now.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (pistons in axel grease): Unfortunately, axel grease is a different smell-creature than petroleum, so I don't think I can claim that.

##FOOTNOTE (not just pounded... downright smashed): Watching this, I wished for the hundredth time you guys could see the hand motions and the little dances that accompany Hans's search for the truth.

Tattoo Friday

Not tomorrow. Not last Friday. No.

Through miracles of modern technology,† we are time travelling two weeks into the past‡ to visit a Very Special Time in a boy's life.§

The day his big sister buys him his first tattoo.¶

[SUMMARY: Quoting the Boy Scout Handbook.]

I got my first tattoo when I was 24.# Sometime thereafter, I offered to buy Brother his first tattoo at such time as he chose to get one.

He was a theatre major in those days and opted to hold off, thinking perhaps there would be roles for which he would be overlooked if they^ had to worry about covering a tattoo.††

[SUMMARY: Those who don't know the history are doomed to have me it repeat it to them.]

So last December, he said, "Hey, have you gotten me a Christmas present yet?"

"Not yet."

"Don't."

"Okaaaaayyyyy..."

"The time has come."

Of course, all you have to do is look at the date above to realise the time hadn't FULLY come.‡‡

[SUMMARY: The suspense continues.]

He knew he wanted penguins, both for our magical time% in the Antarctic§§ and because daddy penguins are as involved in the brooding and raising of penguin chicks as mommy penguins are and he felt that symbolic of his own life.¶¶

So I got him a penguin calendar## to give him inspiration and it took him most of a year, but we finally got the boy inked up.









good grief, we're a pasty family





As needled by Alisha at Lifetime of Sol. We like Alisha because

1. She does outstanding work and marvelous colour,
2. she's friendly,
3. she pimped Brother early and often by calling his choice of ink "cute"††† and "squishy,"‡‡‡ and
4. she said it was OK to take pictures and post them on the Innernets.§§§

[SUMMARY: I'm practically the Discovery channel, I'm so educational.]

It does this sister's heart good to know that the inky penguins and all they represent will always have a link to me,¶¶¶ as much as if Brother had tattooed my name on his arm.###


†FOOTNOTE (crossed): i.e. -- the camera won't upload itself.

‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): I have mental TARDIS, which sounds like twelve kinds of politically incorrect, but makes me giggle.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Isn't this what they told you boys about when they separated us in the sixth grade and told us girls we were going to smell bad?

¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): What? That entry wasn't in your baby book?

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): September 24, 1991 (a Tuesday), notably before every weenie on the planet decided Japanese symbols and northwestern tribal art needed to be on their shoulders (I believe that happened the following Thursday). I'm only fashion-forward in limited quantities. It's crucial to note what those are or you may miss them entirely.

^FOOTNOTE (careted): Not the usual US Dept. of Them, but the mythical cadre of wily and mercurial producers and directors that hold each young actor's fate in their thorny claws.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): I do not wish to speculate what sort of naked theatre he was planning on performing.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): I hear you giggling, Kim.

%FOOTNOTE (percented): Much of the magic for me came from finally getting to use my first year Spanish (Los pinguinos en la cocina bailan) and telling fairy tales to Adélie penguins.

§§FOOTNOTE (herbies! (and if you get that, you've been to The Ice): A magical time they DON'T tell you about in sixth grade health class.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (like two Adélie penguins): Though if you've seen March of the Penguins, you may wish to note penguin daddies still prepare more meals than Brother typically does.

##FOOTNOTE (two pounds of penguin in a five-pound bag): Which he had to carry down Colfax (exactly the sort of street that hosts tattoo parlours) for the pimps and Crips to see.

†††FOOTNOTE (tattoo guns... pow! pow! pow!): Keep in mind that the driving force behind his getting inked was gym envy -- all the cool, buff guys at the gym have ink.

‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (penguin feathers): Awww... wookat da cheeks on da baby penguin.

§§§FOOTNOTE (intricacies of modern etiquette): I *always* ask permission when I start waving my camera around. Not only is it good manners, but most of the time the subjects think I'm kidding when I say, "It'll probably end up on the Internet" and I get to feel all proper and righteous because I told them so.

¶¶¶FOOTNOTE (triple dip): Awwwww...

###FOOTNOTE (oh, the pounding of my heart): Which, let's face it, would be weird.

p.s. -- Don't tell Brother, but his tattoo just took on fascinating new dimensions.