miscellany

Happy Birthday, Kelly Peyton Carron!!!

Things have been pretty quiet since I’ve been back. On Saturday I went to Savage Mill, where I met up with Kristen and Mom. We spent a really nice day shopping, and Mom bought us lunch at the brewery restaurant there. After that I went home and worked for a few hours, and then I worked on Sunday as well. On Sunday morning I was awoken at 8:30am by one of my upstairs neighbors screaming “HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! OHHHH GLORY!” etc, etc [insert random claps, stomps, and gibberish that was quite possibly speaking in tongues].

During this upcoming weekend I was supposed to visit to Heather in upstate NY, but because I’ll be bogged down with work, I had to cancel. Ptthhhh.

This morning I donated blood. NIH has changed their security procedures yet again; this time I had to turn off my car, get out, have an employee run a metal detector wand over me, have an employee swab my steering wheel (searching for infectious agents, I guess), and get my trunk searched (the women got a good laugh out of the tacky old record I had stashed in there, which I’ve been meaning to turn into a fabulous purse).

Oh, and this morning I also developed a spontaneous choking fit while drinking my cup of coffee, and it caused me to cough up a glut of coffee that sprayed in an arc halfway across my bedroom. My duvet cover, a library book, a stack of greeting cards I was getting ready to mail, and the brand-new book just loaned to me by my boss all got hit. Damn! So now I’m sending out cards covered in coffee stains, and I have to run over to Borders after work to buy my boss a new copy of the book, keeping the old one for myself. (Although it’s a good book and I’ll be glad to own a copy, generally I’m too cheap to spend money on first edition hardbacks!)

In other news, I feel compelled to mention that Freyja had a smooshed turd stuck to her tail the other day, and I was so paranoid about her developing e. coli from it while grooming herself, I decided that I had to remove it all costs. Trying to hold her down while scraping at her tail with a paper towel wasn’t working, so out came the scissors. Freyja is usually a genial cat, albeit a bit jumpy. She doesn’t like to be held or give me kisses, but she’d live on my lap if she could. Yet she’s also got a rabid alter ego—a split personality, if you will—who periodically comes out. I call it Snappy McSnapperson. And you can imagine how quickly ol’ Snappy came roaring out of his cave when I was trying to trim shit-caked fur off Freyja’s tail with sharp scissors. Thus began the anxiety-fraught queasy tango of me chasing her through my tiny apartment, scissors glinting menacingly, trying to snip off as much shitty fur as possible, while she hissed, growled, spat, swatted, and wriggled free. Her hisses were punctuated with me protesting, “But I only want to keep you safe and healthy! I don’t want you to go into septic shock!” Did she care? No. Such drama in that little buff-colored package!

And finally, does this mean I’m going to hell? Apparently. What a shocker!



song heard most recently before posting: On The Streets I Ran—Morrissey