142

Oh 142, how I've missed you.

Lately I've been shamefully seduced from your comfort by the tease of post-post-Easter discount candy and have squandered my premenstrual, mid-menstrual, and upcoming post-menstrual needs on the tasty chocolate/caramel/cookie wonder that is a bag of mini Twix bars.

Here, on a stress-filled afternoon, after a weary week of woe, I wander to your welcoming bosom, coins jingling in my hand, anticipating the sweet goodness of your chocolaty shell, the fluffy comfort of your nougat center. I eye the empty slots of the long-neglected vending machine and rejoice when I find your precious niche filled with plenty. As my coins slide into the slot and thunk down through the innards of the great prison that withholds you, one pesky quarter is rejected by the Philistine machine.

In desperation I rubbed the quarter against my thigh. When that fails, I entreat the aid of the machine, hoping the friction of coin edge to metal wall will correct its deformity and deem it acceptable to the fascists that impede our reunion.

Success! The display shows my credit of $.75 and I type 142 without verification, confident that our time apart has not impacted our deeply nurtured relationship. The round circle of your captivity recedes and you quickly burst forth in freedom and tumble down into my waiting embrace.

Oh 142, sweet Three Musketeers Bar, I will never doubt you again.

Good Day Sunshine!!

What A Way to Greet the Morning!

I confess - I am a child-skipper. Whenever I'm reading a blog and someone goes off into paragraphs of glee about their kid(s), I skip down, tune out, phase away. My friend Moyra got me hooked on dooce.com and I get a kick out of it and read it every day, but when the author does her monthly letter to her three-year-old daughter? I'm gone.


Don't get me wrong, I love kids. Someone else's kids. I am a kick-ass babysitter, mostly because I (nearly) always tell the truth to kids so long as it won't scar them for life. Kids are quick - they know when you're lying or hiding something and they lose respect if they catch you at it.

Good thing I don't usually get caught.

I'm crazy about Moyra's boys, enjoy hearing about Melissa and Alizia's kids, and am literally tickled purple (I don't do pink) by my cousin Julie's loony threesome. If (when) my sister and Marcy have kids, I'll be the most fabulous aunt you have ever seen. If nothing else, they'll always have music and laughter with me.

I love the Christmas postcards and e-mails I get from far-flung friends with pictures of their kids and updates on their schenanigans so I can keep tabs on what's going where and who's doing what. But I have zero interest in having children of my own and while I understand the all-consuming obsession parents have for them - especially the first one or if there's an only - I'm an eye-roller when it comes to epic odes to their latest poop or hour-long conversations on breast-feeding or artificial insemination or the cuteness of baby clothes (these are examples of ACTUAL CONVERSATIONS I've had the dubious pleasure of sitting on the cusp of.) Oi Vey.

I also never coo.

All of which makes me have to laugh at myself when I go off about my cats. Because I have a double X chromosome, genetics has instill a latent mothering syndrome in my DNA and it rears it's ugly head when it comes to my cats. This may be somewhat of a cliche, but I think I avoid being a punchline by refusing to refer to myself as their mother (I do not give birth to cats - my life may be many things, but it hasn't become an alien movie yet.) And as my sister has one more cat than I - two if you count Feaghan as my mother's cat - she holds the crown as reigning Crazy Cat Lady allowing me to escape that cliche as well.

After yesterday's post, I figured y'all were free of any feline ra-ra-rees for at least another week, but this morning's montage could not be resisted. Every morning the sun rises over the metallic peaks of New York City and shines a bright light directly into my bedroom and kitchen. Usually this is greeted with an ARGH from me, especially if Baxter has knocked aside the super dark shade and curtain in the night, thus allowing the morning sun to shine right onto my face. But this morning's wonderfully Spring weather was a joy and had me repeatedly smacking the snooze button and rolling deeper into my covers as the cool air and tempting sun wafted through the open bedroom window. It all was too much for Hollis who I found fully seduced and rutching around in the window seat in convulsions of pleasure, rollicking in the sunbeams with all the passion of a sun worshipper's unholy devotion. And so I share her with you.

Simple joys, simple pleasures.

Overdue

I have been remiss in posting, there's no question of that, but I have good reasons and right now I'm much too weary to dive into the post I've been writing in my head for the last ten days to explain those reasons. Actually, there are three or four posts ruminating in my head (a lot goes on in there at any given time my friends. Most of which is rather scary) but they - and you - will have to wait little longer.

But I've just spent a long stretch of time trying to understand HTML code so that I can add some enhancements to my page and followed that with a few minutes of looking at cute kitty photos, which put me in a much better frame of mind. Because there's precious little that can't be improved by a picture of a cat pushing a baby carriage or a kitten licking someone's toothbrush.

In that spirit, I add here a quartet of pictures of my own menagerie that never fail to make me smile.


Though not usually a talker (Hollis holds the crown for that) here Baxter made a rare, emphatic vocal performance. Her voice is used so infrequently that it always sounds raspy and tentative and rattles deep in her throat. Here she's either trying to save me from the monstrous thing obstructing my face, looking to eat the camera itself, or just hoping to impress upon me her desire to be fed. Personally, I'm betting on number three.


I've shared in an earlier post about the twins and Feaghan how Feaghan's favorite pal is a hamster named Percy. How my mother came up with Percy, I couldn't tell you, but since the twins have a hedgehog named Mountjoy, I'm not exactly in a position to point fingers. Feaghan has a ritual every day where she'll bring out all her troops one-by-one into the living room and then back into the bedroom over the course of the night. It's a little parade of inanimate objects and stuffed toys. It also can make walking around in the dark a little dodgy. One morning I came out into the living to find Percy standing at attention, bold as brass, waiting for the day to begin as though daring me to get in his way or be a wuss about it.

Being the imp she is, Hollis can never resist investigating everything that crosses her path. She is a sucker for bags, like most cats, but has been known to get herself wrapped up in the plastic grocery bags and then drag it all around the kitchen with her in alternating paroxysms of glee and fits of get-this-thing-off-me. Guess which one she's thinking here.

And I am not so good-hearted of a kitty wrangler not to let her languish there to learn her lesson while I point and laugh and take pictures.
And last but never least is a "jeez, she's just too cute" photo of Feaghan who's basically wondering why we all just can't get our acts together and chill out, man.