Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Some Cheese With My 'Whine'...


Maybe it’s the full moon veiled by a gauze of smoggish haze. Or that my monthly ‘friend’ is creeping up on me (sorry guys). Or that I can’t up my score on Bejeweled Blitz.

Even trusty old TV failed me. The Lakers lost and the best HBO could cough up was ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’. Great book, horrible movie. Do not watch.

Bottom line; I'm grouchy tonight. Don’t know why. Lots of stuff going on and most of it is ‘meh’. Couldn’t do a pastel drawing to save my ass. It’s not even 9 p.m. yet if I start doing more paper research I’m bound to fall to sleep quickly and wake up at 1:30 a.m. with no hopes of falling back.

And writing? Writing…sigh. I feel burnt out on the book I was so damn hot for a few years back. I want it done but I’m just so UGH!

And I torture myself further staring at a lovely watercolor I did last year that I can’t replicate for the life of me.

Performance anxiety. Perfectionism. I have to remind myself of my own advice; perfectionism is nothing more than low self-esteem. I still draw. I still write (obviously). I still do my work.

That doesn’t make me feel better.

Let me just bitch for once in this blog.

People annoy me too. Right now, I don’t like people. I’d really like to dive deeper into this but I better keep my mouth shut. Nothing pays off like the restraint of tongue and pen and, er, blog.

The house is messy. The cats are sleepy. The boyfriend went to bed. The click of my computer keys and the clock are all the only conversations I am holding. All this beautiful quiet time and I am wasting it being pissy. I can’t bear to look at my novel right now. I can’t think of picking up a brush and painting either. This strange frustration began this morning waking up too late to do any writing. I like to do my writing in the morning. At the library, with a contraband cup of coffee. Where there are no phones, no cats and no neighbors with tumbling babies to distract me. But I got up too late and now, when i got oodles of time, I'm irked.

Suddenly it is very important to clean the litter box or take out the trash. Or go belly rub my new pink-toed kitty who sits atop the tower while my mammoth tabby glares from the floor. Then I gaze at some forgotten linocuts. Or a book I started reading and didn’t finish. Life has been a lot of start and go and stop in the middle and I can’t figure it out. It’s a fucked up funk. That’s all. No way to work it out unless I do work. Because in the end I only have myself to contend with.

And my lousy score on Bejeweled Blitz.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Neti Pot - A Love Story Part II


I got a lot of titles for this blog. Another possible one is: How A Box of Kleenex Became My Constant Companion.

If you are easily squeamish feel free to exit. I won’t be offended. But really, it’s not that bad. And it’s way less than 500 words. I’m still kinda oogie.

I am getting over the cold(s) that 2011 welcomed me with. Remnants of the Xmas 2010 cold crossed paths with a nasty virus my dear significant other dragged home after New Years’.

Bam.

A solitary sneeze at work which I dismissed as allergies landed me on my ass for a week. Instead of the vice-like nasal congestion I endured with the first wave, a thickness festered in my throat that Riccola could not soothe. Even water didn’t taste good.

Serendipitously enough it was also NFL play-offs so my couch potato-ness was justified.

Of course I missed a gathering with some girlfriends I haven’t seen in months. I missed work (and when I don’t work I don’t get paid). I barely wrote, draw or painted. Not that it was possible to produce anything other than varied hues of gunk. You should see my phlegmatic gymnastics.

Neti Pot to the rescue (again).

I have diligently using my Neti Pot (a.k.a. Snot Pot by my jealous boyfriend) since May of 2009 so Neti and I are serious. Neti has kept me healthy for the most part; these cold(s) are the first I have been stricken with in a loooong time.

Actually, I was kinda curious. How would the Neti work through all that buttery goodness plugging up my cranium?

Some mornings it was impossible. Nothing poured out because the cold was new and was mounting its evil grip. It wasn’t until things tapered down a few days into it when I was finally able to get a wash in. Clear pearl-sized bubbles oozed out in long strings before the long ropey yellow bands of crap flowed. The Neti wash also nudged big irritating reddish brown snot balls coagulating my nasal passages.

So nice to breathe again—I even got that old Toni Braxton jam in my now clear head.

I’m better, or rather, cautiously optimistic. I so don’t want to get sick again, at least not for a while. Neti Pot makes all things better if not more interesting.
I’d like to go into the benefits of gargling with apple cider vinegar but I wanna keep this particular blog short. Way less than 500 words.

And I’m not about to push my luck.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Cat Lessons


Funny what you can learn from a cat.

The orange kitten, Kody, has come home. Immediately my fat Malone and grouchy Max began a chorus of hisses and snarls that are the soundtrack as I compose this blog.
I didn’t expect to learn a major lesson and that not one word of it would be delivered by a human.

Kody is 3 pounds of adorable marmalade fluff. My old cats don’t think so, especially when he eats their vittles and constantly searches for play. Max has become a chew toy for Kody while Malone is hardly benevolent. She puffs up to the size of a rabid raccoon and growls in a chilling manner.

My old cats didn’t ask for a kitten for Christmas.

I became a reluctant referee. I swoop Kody up when the others come into sight. I plead with Malone. I chide Max. I even designated the second bedroom into Kody’s panic room. Harmony, after all, is the soup du jour. It’s what I’m good at.

So I think.

Epiphanies are born under strange circumstances, like this feline power struggle.
I don’t speak ‘cat’ very well but on Christmas Eve morning it clicked; this was how they communicate. How they salvage their space. How they devised their tenuous pecking orders. How the point gets across. All things I don’t do very well with humans and my vocal chords are more advanced.

The one thing I cannot accuse my cats of is hypocrisy. They stand by what their needs are. The cat tower top belongs to whoever is there at the moment. So is the foot of the bed and my grandmother’s patch quilt. And my poor old cats have never attacked Kody. Max and Malone make it quite clear when he needs to back off. It is he, in his kitten cuteness, that breaks the rules and wreaks havoc ]]]]]]]]]]]]\--sorry, that was him walking across the laptop.

Friends told me to let the cats be. Let them chisel out their pecking order. They don’t need my help. Hell, why would they want it? My whole life has been spent trying to avert confrontation. In some instances it means me sucking up something I don’t like.

It doesn’t work all the time.

I’m going to try and stop sugar- coating my problems. Speak up when something may not be right. Tell others when I need my space and remind them when they invade it. Because when I don’t, (and I often don’t) I ended up hating the person scarfing down my kibble.

Whether it be at home, at work or a ride on the metro link, I need to take the lesson my cats taught me to heart:

Say what you mean.
Mean what you say.
And chalk out those lines in the kitty litter.