Rough Weekend for the Bea.

Beatrix Potter had a rough time this weekend. First, she got into trouble for constantly farting on people. She's done this all of her life, and for the most part, family are used to it by now. Unfortunately, she's getting especially vicious with visitors. I tried to cat-shame her.

It worked about as well as you would expect cat-shaming to work.

She's always a bit of a jerk about playing in people's glasses of water, also. You have to take your water glass with you wherever you venture because, if you leave it someplace, when you return, she will be sitting by it with her feet in it. Shaming doesn't help with that, either.

Then, it was a nice day on Sunday and I know she's been wanting to go outside and explore the area around the apartment. I wasn't willing to just let her out and she's never worn a collar or harness or anything, but she had to learn in order to go outside. I bought what was supposed to be a comfy cat harness and a little leash and strapped her in and out we ventured. Well, she hated the harness and fought it until the point when she finally got interested enough in the outdoors to stop fighting the harness and she led me under a tree where a very angry bird shouted at us the entire time. As Bea was gathering the courage to stick her face by a railroad tie fence, she got pooped on by said angry bird. Actually, we both sort of did, but she got the brunt of it.

Needless to say, Beatrix ended the weekend with a very long bathing session and then sleeping most of the evening away.

Oh, Miss Bea. You win some, you lose some. Better luck next weekend.

Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing.

Beatrix has been busy this evening chasing flying bugs. First there was a wasp flying around and now I think there's a smaller flying bug like a little gnat or something? She's been leaping up/off of things and clapping her paws in mid-air all evening. It's much more entertaining now that she's after something less sting-inducing than the wasp. Earlier, I was really just hoping the wasp had enough sense to stay aloft and try to ignore the leaping feline.

I saw the movie "Lars and the Real Girl" recently. I had heard from friends that it was a good movie, and I like Ryan Gosling, but I hadn't ever gotten around to seeing it. It was adorbz. Ryan Gosling is a good actor, I don't care what people say. He made me cry over a doll. The man can act.

My legs still hurt from the 5k on Saturday. Not so much as Sunday or yesterday, but still. I had such a great time this weekend! Everything was a lot of fun. This week at work has been good so far. Yesterday at work I helped completely re-shuffle one of our newspaper storage rooms. We needed a better organizational system and I think we've got it now. At least it's more efficient than it was. I'm hoping that it proves to be a bit of a time-saver. I'm also trying to stay up on a project that I'm trying to finish at work. It's a long-term project but I really want to get a large part of it done in this calendar year. It will make life so much easier at work. Tasks will take half the time, hopefully! Three cheers for efficiency!

All the students are back on campus. Classes began yesterday and campus is buzzing with activity. I like it busy like this. I don't like it crazy-crowded, but where I'm at is less crowded than where I used to be. The sidewalks are bigger and there's much more room for people to hasten around each other without bumping or stepping on each other's heels. It's nice and relaxing to be a terminal degree-holder with a job. No exams, no assignments, no school! I'm really enjoying it all. A lot of our time at work this week has been spent directing students to the auditorium they're looking for, or trying to get them into the actual library when they stumble into our office by accident.

It's been a bit since I book-talked on here, but I've been reading an interesting book lately: The Train of Small Mercies by David Rowell. It's a novel based on the history of the funeral train trip of Bobby Kennedy. His funeral train went from NYC to Washington, D. C. I didn't know he had a funeral train. I don't know too much about him, really. I'm learning a lot but it's hard to decipher fact from the fiction in historical fiction sometimes, you know? Like, for instance, was there really a train that rushed by the funeral train and ran over spectators? It seems like there could have been because it was an awkward tid-bit to throw into the plot if it wasn't true. It kind of came out of nowhere. The book itself is really well-written. It follows several different characters and their stories. The common thread is that all are somehow connected to the funeral train. Most are just going to watch it go by. One is working on the train. I just did a quick search on the subject and it seems like the bizarre twist of a train rushing past the Kennedy train is true. Two people were killed and four were seriously injured. So, that's where I'm at right now in the book. Really sad. The overall book is good, though. Rowell doesn't write about the Kennedys. They are nothing but (important) background characters for the 4 or 5 stories he's threading together. It's pretty good. I recommend it if you're interested in historical fiction.

Enough about funerals, though: on to newborns. I have a baby shower to attend this weekend and I'm a book-buyer for baby showers. Not only because I have rediscovered my own love of picture books, but because books are such a great gift for new parents. They're always getting loads of stuff that eventually they aren't going to be able to use any longer. Books are different. Books are the baby shower gift that keeps on giving...for years and years. Anyway, the mama-to-be already knows that my present will be books. I had a great time shopping for them. I bought a couple for me in the process. Books, books, books. I've been looking at a lot of children's books lately. People seem to equate the genre of Children's Books with 'simple', 'silly', or 'unsophisticated'. They aren't. Most children's books cover some pretty heavy subjects. They can try to lighten the mood with pretty illustrations and artwork, but don't ever shrug off a book as a 'kid's book' because it has pictures in it. It might be one of the most intelligent and touching books you'll ever read! Here are some quotes I've come across recently to illustrate a bit of my point:

But, reader, there is no comfort in the word “farewell,” even if you say it in French. “Farewell” is a word that, in any language, is full of sorrow. (from The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo)

It’s funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality.  (from The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan)

Dying’s part of the wheel, right there next to being born….Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing. (fromTuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt)

Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering. (from Winnie The Pooh by A.A. Milne)

When you have done a great many good things, you forget to speak of them….It is those who do very little who must talk of it. (from Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen)

Forts are for nerds.

I don't think I'll ever outgrow building forts out of sheets. I hope I never outgrow it, anyway. My love of forts is 28-years-old and still going strong. I remember spending hours in my room as a kid pulling chairs around my bed and then meticulously stretching bed sheets over them and attaching them with rubber bands in any way that I could. When I lived in apartments, I would generally make forts out of the dining room table and a futon. I would drag the table closer to the living room and build away. It was nice to be able to be in the fort and look out the "doorway" to watch movies on the tv. But, now that I live in my own house, I've kind of gone back to making forts in the bedrooms, like when I was a kiddo. The difference is really in the sturdiness of the forts I built as a kid and the ones I build now. My kid forts could last for days and days. Really, until the sheets got yanked too much and the rubber bands popped off, or until my mom forced me to take it down. The rubber bands were the real trick. My parents seemed to have a never-ending stockpile of rubber bands. I think it had to do with the fact that they subscribed to the newspaper. I don't subscribe to the newspaper, therefore I don't get rubber bands. (I'm not willing to buy rubber bands for fort-making, either. Part of the fun of fort-building is honing your creativity and resourcefulness...I think buying supplies to build a fort is sort of cheating.) Still, my lack of rubber bands is not a huge deal, seeing as I tend to have a shortage of chairs, as well. I have one chair that goes into my grown-up fort making nowadays. It works pretty well, but my forts now don't last nearly as long as my kid forts did. My adult forts tend to last an evening or so. Maybe more if I fall asleep in one. Maybe less if the cat destroys it. 


Tonight was a fort-building night. I usually build them when I have bad days because it's sort of an escape from the bad stuff. Nothing is ever very bad when you're in a sheet fort. But, I haven't had a bad day in a long time, I just felt like building a fort tonight and reading my book in it. It only lasted a short while because Beatrix got it within a couple of hours. But, a couple of hours of fort-time in will probably keep me happy for months. Plus, I nearly finished the book I'm reading. Reading in forts is one of my favorite things to do. I plug in strings of Christmas lights and it feels really wonderful to be a "grown-up" in a sheet-fort that glows while settling in to read a book that you're hooked on. I would love to create some sort of permanent fort in my house; someplace that I could go and be my nerdy fort-building self without worrying when the whole place will collapse under the weight of a jumping Beatrix. But, then I wonder whether having a permanent fort will take away most of the fun? None of the forts are ever the same, and I think that's part of the cool factor of it.  Hmm. Oh well, enough chitter chatter. I took a few pictures of the fort and I turned them into paintings because I wanted to mess with the artsy part of a photo-editing site I'm experimenting with. As to whether or not I'll use the site...I think the jury is out, still.


No matter. Happy fort-building, everyone!

Part of the exterior of the fort: Blankets, a chair, a table, a floor pillow and Christmas lights.

Interior.

The reader in her fort.

The Destroyer plotting her attack.

Bless your beautiful hide.

Last weekend Beatrix got some new toys that are like nerf balls and each night we spend about 15-20 minutes playing. Or, rather, I do. She enjoys having a playmate for a bit every night. This is my attempt to be more interactive with her because she's alone most of the time and she's a very social cat. I'm feeling kind of guilty about not giving her all the attention she kind of needs right now. I am seriously considering getting another cat so that Bea won't be alone all the time. I think she'd be happier with a feline friend. But I'm not quite at the point where I'm ready to get a second cat right now. So, here I am throwing a nerf ball around the house to entertain Beatrix Potter each night.

I'm actually in the middle of playtime right now. Blog a little, throw the ball around/entertain the cat. It's a delicate balance. I do think my hand-eye coordination is getting a good boost from this. It's been a while since I've played catch.

I got my hair cut this week and my hair is officially out of the pixie stage. Totally gone. It's kind of cool to have long(ish) hair again. It's been about four years or so since my hair has been longer than a pixie cut and I had forgotten a lot of things about longer hair. A) I have a lot of hair. B) It takes a long time to blow dry long(ish) hair. C) My hair is wavy. C is a real surprise because I don't remember any wave to my hair. At all. I even went back to pictures from when my hair was long and it was straight. I remember using a flat iron on it, but that was mainly to just squish the thickness down a bit, not to actually flatten any waviness. So, anyway, that's new. Hello, waves. Speaking of outer appearances: I woke up the other day with a scratch on the back of my left hand and I have no idea where it came from. Don't you hate that? When you notice clear indications that you've somehow injured yourself but you have no recollection of how you might have received that cut or bruise?

Tomorrow is Missouri's National History Day. My office hosts the statewide contest. We're all reporting for duty at random points in the day tomorrow. I was not silly enough to sign up for anything that required me to show up before two in the afternoon. Mornings are not my strong suit and certainly not a Saturday morning. I'm mostly just background noise tomorrow. No judging or anything. I have been a judge in previous years both in Missouri and in Texas. It's okay, but I'm happy as background noise this year. I am always impressed by the students and the awesome work that they do on their projects, though. It's a really great program. None of my history teachers ever participated when I was in school, but I wish they had. I would have enjoyed it.

The radio is currently playing a non-stop 30 minute music block of complete suckage. Not a single good song has been played yet. I tried to get Spotify to work on this computer but it refuses to play any music for some reason. Boo. I think I'm going to give in pretty soon and go see the "Hunger Games" movie. Probably when it gets to a cheaper movie theater than the ones it's currently playing in. I haven't read the books, and I want to, but I think I'd just like to see the movie. I've heard really good things about it. Also, it's been eons since I've been to see a movie in a theater. I think last summer was the last time I was in a movie theater. I watched "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" this week in the evenings. I finished it earlier tonight. After the trivia night last weekend I decided I wanted to see the musical again. I just love it so much. Great dancing, good use of color, catchy tunes, interesting story...what's not to like? The barn dance scene is my favorite, and I think one of the best choreographed dances in any musical, ever. The brothers (ones in the colors) learned to dance, like, 5 minutes prior to this scene. They picked it up real well:

Always the first star that I find

If you've never surfed over to SomethingSwanky.com and drooled over the sweets that they showcase every day....well, I don't know what you're waiting for. You need to get on that. Last week I saw this red velvet cake batter dip on Pinterest and followed the link back to SomethingSwanky and nearly lost my mind at the awesomeness of everything I saw. But, this red velvet cake batter dip + funfetti sugar cookies was what blew my mind the most. I can't think of anything that would taste better than this. This even beats out chocolate for me...which I thought would be an impossible feat.

Although, on the topic of chocolate, I've had the brownies with the Symphony chocolate bar in the middle and I can vouch for the amazingness of that, as well. You won't ever want to bake anything without checking out this website first for ideas. It's so awesome.

This weekend went by so fast, but it was such fun. I went to another going-away party, and that was fun. It was with the same group who had to say goodbye to someone last month, as well. I feel like there's been a lot of leaving in the last few years. Lots of going-aways, very few welcome-backs. But, that's the way it is, I guess? It was fun. This was for someone I used to work with who got herself a job back closer to where she grew up. She's pretty excited to go back and who can blame her? I think she'll be happier there, even though she will be missed here. The party was cowboy-themed and included fuzzy mustaches for everyone, sheriff and sheriff's deputy badges, and cowboy hats. Good time. Then I went to a baby shower and it was really fun, too. Lots of cute things and activities. Sometimes baby showers can be a little too cutesy for me. I get kind of overdosed on the 'aww'. But, this was really cleverly done because it was done as a battle of the sexes sort of baby shower and the culmination was for the grandmother to cut the cake that my friend had baked and the inside of the cake would be either blue or pink and that would tell the gender of the baby. Her mother started to cry a little when she cut the cake and found out the baby was a boy. It was really cute. I liked how that was done. Nobody but the parents knew the gender of the baby, so it was exciting for everyone to find out at once. Hunter Amos will make his debut in April. It was a really well-done shower. I had a good time. It was fun too, because it was with some ladies that I don't get to see very often. I went to high school with them and I only see them now and again, so it was really great. Two acted as hostesses for the baby shower and they did such a great job at the planning of it all. Not to mention the soon-to-be mom, who is such a good chef that the cake and everything was delicious. Mmm.

It occurs to me, thinking back over the weekend, that I know some damn good party planners. I myself loathe planning parties or having to act as hostess to anything. I'm always super impressed by people who plan activities that are actually fun to do or clever or creative. I don't mind participating in activities, I just hate being the one having to make preparations and explain rules and things to a bunch of people. I'm a bit of a wallflower when it comes to social situations, especially parties. I prefer to be led or left alone...usually to eat cookies or cake if there is such a thing at the party. There were both at the parties this weekend. Nom, nom, nom.

I really am going to go back to the health plex this week. Tomorrow, I think if all goes well. I'm feeling better and slowly sounding better.

Beatrix usually sleeps with me all night and tends to be a pretty easy-going cat. She usually just sleeps the whole night. Or used to. Since I got back from Peru, she seems to be off-kilter a bit. Or maybe she's pissed off that I left. She's very clearly off routine, whatever the reason. She woke me up at 3:30 this morning by sitting next to my head and then slapping my face with her paws. I was not amused. She does that when she gets bored and wants attention. The slapping part is less dangerous now than it used to be when she still had claws, but it's still an unhappy way to be woken up, especially 3 hours before the alarm has to go off. After she wouldn't stop, she was kicked out of the room. She's starting to recognize when I'm mad at her. She gets her full name used and it only takes once and she's usually got the idea that she's in trouble. Progress in the Hartke house! She's a very good cat and rarely gets in trouble, except in cases like last night where she gets ornery about wanting attention when I'm asleep. I'm hoping we leave this phase behind us shortly.

I'm becoming more of a tea drinker lately. It isn't just because I'm sick, either. I think it has more to do with the fact that at work we have an automatic hot water dispenser (I don't mean the faucet). It takes the hassle out of making tea because you don't have to mess with the  microwave or anything. It's piping hot filtered water! It's great for oatmeal, too. I love it. Here's to hoping that (if you don't have an automatic hot water dispenser) you someday get to experience the awesomeness of this development as well.

Work is once again pretty lonely. Pandora is keeping me company today. Guster is singing about how you are his satellite. Happy Monday!

There is no way back from here but I don't care.

I hope the last rush order for things I'm remembering I need for Peru is over. I'm hoping it gets here in time for packing, now. Hope, hope, hope. It's an extra battery for my camera. Apparently the batteries aren't available in town, so I ended up having to buy the entire kit and kaboodle, but that's okay. It includes a car charger, which might be nice to have anyway.

This week has been dragging. Every day at work seems to craaaawl by. I keep trying to change up the routine by doing different things at lunch, but it hasn't been working. It's still really really slow. It might pick up tomorrow after I finish this one task that I've been working on for a while. I can get back to scanning things and somehow time seems to go quicker when I'm scanning things.

Beatrix stinks. I can't tell why she smells so bad. It's like that character in the Charlie Brown stories, "Pigpen". She's just got stink all stuck on her somehow. She's not likely to enjoy being bathed, although she does have a real affinity for water and she did fall into the bathtub last month when there was water in it. But I don't think she'd enjoy a forced dip in the tub. And besides that, she's not dirty. She's very meticulous about her coat and she's always keeping clean. I don't know. Maybe the cat is just a stinker, simple as that. Smelly cat, smelly cat...

I attempted to go to a basketball game earlier this week to no avail. Spontaneity doesn't work out when you're going to see one of the few undefeated teams left in NCAA basketball, apparently. Mizzou was playing Oklahoma and a co-worker and I had decided to go but we decided to just get a ticket at the door because school is off and a lot of students aren't back yet, so we figured that it wouldn't sell out. Well, that was wrong. It was such a blowout game with Mizzou squashing Oklahoma that it wouldn't have been that exciting anyway, but still. We were surprised to see the Sold Out sign on the arena door before it was even 5 pm. Good on ya, Tigers. Both Mizzou and Baylor are two of the four teams that are still undefeated in the nation! It could all change pretty quickly, but for now, at this moment, it's good. Anyway, since the basketball thing didn't work out, we just went to the new cupcakery in town and it was good! My only problem with cupcakes (as if anyone really has a problem with such a wonderful thing as a cupcake) is that they often put too much icing on them for my taste. I am happy to say that I powered through and enjoyed my red velvet cupcake a whole lot. They just opened the cupcakery within the last couple of weeks and they don't have their menu up yet so the lady was telling us all about what they had. Get this: s'mores cupcakes. Tiramisu cupcakes. Carrot cake cupcakes. Triple chocolate cupcakes. Red velvet cupcakes. Some others that I've forgotten. I had my eye on the red velvet from the moment I set my eyes on the glass case. I do remember that they have a cupcake of the day, which was lemon and that sounded really good, but it was all sold out (story of the day, apparently). I heartily approve of the general idea of cupcakeries, though. You can always scrape some of the icing off when you reach sugar code red.

Earlier this week when I was eating lunch I overheard this person emphatically telling this other person how many choices a person makes in a day. And how every single choice that you make can change your life. And I was thinking about that. And it's not the first time I've heard that, but you tend to forget that you make so many choices in a day, you know? Like, you make so many decisions without even really thinking about it every day, but if you consciously chose to do something different, you could change the scope of your entire day at the least, and your whole life at the most. Not a minute goes by when you haven't chosen to act a certain way, do a certain thing, handle a given hurdle in a certain way, etc. It's interesting to think about for a bit, just the true amount of free will that you have every single second of your life.  Of course, you can't think about it for too long because you start to fall behind in your normal routine of auto-pilot and doing those things that you chose to do however many weeks or years ago when you consciously made that first decision to do what you now always do. I think the people at the restaurant were some sort of support group or church meeting or something because things became very Christ-heavy and I tuned them out at that point and focused on my yummy grilled cheese sandwich and super delicious snickerdoodle cookie. But, I did think about all the myriad of options facing me after I finished eating. I could have driven to the airport and hopped a plane to some place, I could have gone and bought another snickerdoodle cookie and stuffed my face for a little longer, I could have gone over and sat down with those people and tried to talk more about this topic of conversation and maybe end up making new friends, etc. In the end, I chose to forgo a second snickerdoodle, spontaneous plane ride, or the hijacking of a churchy/support therapy session, and instead just went back to work and tried to stay awake while working on entering details of Missouri regimental histories from the the Civil War into my spreadsheet. But still...I had options.

We've come a long long way together.

Happy December 19th. It's National Oatmeal Muffin Day.

This weekend was busy + fun. It was bun. I graduated (on National Underdog Day) and it was good times. The commencement speech was over before I even realized I was listening to the commencement speech. And then I didn't fall down or anything! I competently put the hood thingy on the gown. My cap only fell off a couple of times and I didn't fall asleep during the eons of doctoral candidates getting hooded and handshaked and hugged and whatnot. I was amused throughout the ceremony by a handful of supporters of a new doctor named Saif Somethinorother, whose friends took it upon themselves to bring posterboard and write out different words and spell them out in the audience. They had a little rubber horn that they honked when they had the words spelled out so that Saif would see them. They first spelled "Saif". Then they spelled "Egypt" (where I assume Saif is from). They were doing well up to that point. Then they tried to do "We (heart) Saif" except the fella who was put in charge of the (heart) and the S got them turned around so when they honked and everyone looked it said "Wes (heart) Aif" until the guy sheepishly switched it. It kept me awake through the ceremony watching to see what they would come up with next. Thanks, Saif, for graduating in December and having such awesomely amusing and supportive family and friends.

Look at that happy girl with her empty diploma case. Aw.

So, there were also some parties, at which I played some games. It was fun. "Scattergories" was played. I like Scattergories. It always creates some laughs. One of the best ones from the weekend was when one person read the category wrong and instead of listing 'things that grow' that began with an M, she read it as 'things that glow', and she went through then entire round of people saying things like 'Monkeys' and 'Marigolds" and never blinked an eye. Someone became skeptical when she shouted out 'Moon rocks' and then when she realized what she'd done the game kind of fell apart for a while with laughing and mocking, because wouldn't you question someone else's answer when they shout out 'Monkey' and you are under the assumption that the category was glowing things? I arrived late due to dealing with another part of the weekend: Beatrix had to have a little surgery and she's not a patient that handles healing very well. At least not when she's left alone. She's getting better, I think. She's just not any good at resting and not jumping around when she's wounded. I also saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. I liked the first one and I think the second one is better. But what I really like about it is that it's artistically done with the special effects and things. I love the way they tell the story with the fast motion and then the slow motion mixed. The first one was like that too, and I just really enjoy going to the movies more when the film is actually awesomely shot like that rather than just watching a long tv-show type movie that's got nothing all that interesting about the way its filmed. Nice job, Guy Ritchie. 

Then, I attempted baking. Today was my first day of being a full-time worker bee rather than a student worker at my job. And it was also the holiday party. And snack day. And I wanted to bring lots of stuff. So I made a cake, sugar cookies, and attempted peppermint bark. I am more Julia Child than Martha Stewart. I am more of the gang who believes that if you drop something and you're alone in the kitchen, you can just pick it up and continue on as if nothing happened. It's sort of a 'if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it' kind of philosophy on cooking, I know. But it seems to work okay. Except the cake overflowed the pan it was in and dumped out all over my oven. I accidentally put too much peppermint flavoring into the peppermint bark and it turned out more like peppermint leather. After adding more chocolate though, it finally became more like bark. The sugar cookies turned out great, but the chocolate chip ones I also made are really sticky and have kind of molded into one giant cookie that holds the form of the glass bowl I was trying to keep them in...

But looks are somewhat deceiving! The cake tastes really really good. Half it was eaten today. I put a sign on it that said what it was (Chocolate Pear Spice Cake) and also that it 'tastes better than it looks'. I also kind of guilted a couple of people into trying it. (They all liked it.) The sugar cookies were a huge hit. They taste really good. Even a guy who's mother is a baker told me the cookies were really good. How 'bout THEM apples?! And the peppermint bark...well. One person tried it and said it was 'fresh'. Hardly anybody ate it. I don't blame them. It's a little strong. I won't eat it if I bring it back home.

Oh, holiday baking, you and I are not always compatible. But in a blindfolded taste test, that overflowed cake could be a real contender for winning. Really. It's pretty good. Here's a closeup of the cake, but not the overflowing part.

Nom nom nom.

Also, I was watching "Love and Other Drugs" earlier (not a bad movie, especially being able to watch Jake Gyllenhaal be all adorable and stuff for a couple of hours. It's a pleasant way to spend some time.) and Fatboy Slim's song "Praise You" came on during a scene and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. "We've come a long long way together...through the hard times and the good...I have to celebrate you baby. I have to praise you like I shou-ou-ou-ould-d-d-d-d-d-d-d."

[Travis Barker drum break]

"I am so glad you are a part of our profession!" I got that sentence in an email from my practicum professor after I submitted my final paper and evaluation yesterday. How sweet is that?! I felt all warm and snuggly. She had been apprehensive about me doing my practicum where I was because of the arson early on in the semester, but I said I wanted to stay and I learned a lot about disaster recovery in the practicum, and that's what I wrote about in my paper. In the end, I think my professor was pleased that I had still been able to learn things despite the arson, and even though it wasn't quite the education that other students had taken away from their practicums. Now I have a pretty clear understanding of what it takes to try to fix one guy's drunken rampage. That guy still hasn't been charged with anything. I guess they've found him mentally incompetent or something? I think he was actually just drunk and likes fire. Which...I actually went to girl scout camp with a girl who was a pyromaniac. I remember a few of us sneaking into the girls bathroom cabin at night and watching her set fire to the bathroom sinks using hairspray. That's the first time I ever saw fire actually dance. You could just turn on the faucet to put the fires out. It was actually kind of pretty as long as it was contained like that. Pyromania certainly wasn't on the Girl Scout camp agenda, but you'd be surprised what happens at Girl Scout camp. Someday I'll tell you about the shanking that occurred in my group during my final summer. 


On to more recent events, though:


Lots of stuff can happen in a month. Early November, I was waiting to find out if I passed my comps, job-hunting, taking care of Iris, and driving Tinker all over the place. Fast-forward to now and I'm prepping for graduation, have a full-time job starting the day after graduation, have Beatrix the fastest cat on four legs, and have a new-to-me car named Dewey. Dewey is a Mazda3 and he's awfully pretty. I drove 5 cars all over town and had probably the most patient car salesman ever. He only looked slightly annoyed one time when he got a car out and then I got in to drive it and drove it halfway around the parking lot and was like, 'No. This is not for me.' and parked it and asked to drive another one. Although it could also be that he couldn't get out of the car either because of some bizarre child-locking issue on that car, too. But, by the end of the sale, he was (of course) feeling much more positive and he even went and filled Dewey's tank up with gas for me! 
Here's a stock photo of the car via Google. Imagine it in a pale blue color and you'll understand how awfully adorable Dewey is:

That front grill looks like its smiling, doesn't it? What a cheerful, lovely car. 

I was kind of bubbly and excited getting the keys. I wasn't really looking forward to the entire experience because I felt like there were too many choices and I didn't want to waste anybody's time by test driving a lot of cars, but after doing research I decided that showing up and driving 4 would be the right thing to do. So, I drove 4 2010 models: Ford Focus (the one I wouldn't drive onto the road, only on the parking lot), Toyota Corolla (my second choice car. I really liked it. It was incredibly quiet. And the cheapest car, too.), Subaru Impreza (Loud, loud, loud. And Subaru redesigned the front seat to make it super uncomfortable. I like Subarus, but I'm not sold on the pricetag. I think other small cars are a better deal if you absolutely don't need to have AWD.), and then the Mazda3 (semi-quiet ride, comfy seats, roomy, awesome interior design, all-around the best of the 4.). Dewey was the second mazda3 that I drove. He was walled in by many other cars, so I drove an easier-to-get-out black one first. But, I'm just not that into black cars. And since I had a choice, I opted for Dewey, the blue one.


Also, my godmother is out of the hospital and at home! She's really interested in writing but has never been sure what to write about. Now she has something to write about and she's decided she will use this experience to start writing, so that's good. She's got a lot of hospital stories now. Especially Thanksgiving-hospital stories and they're all kind of funny as long as you don't have to actually spend a lot of time in a hospital. If you ever have been in one or have had someone in one for an extended stay, you probably already know how completely uninformed most of the hospital nurses and doctors are when it comes to patients. They never know what's going on because they have so many patients coming and going and they can't keep it straight. It's understandable, but kind of backward. You have so many different docs, nurses, techs, even the food people; nobody's really got a true idea of what's going on. Someone brings in a machine to hook the patient up to something and then they leave for a second to check on something and while they're gone, a nurse comes in and turns the machine off and leaves, and the tech comes back and gripes at the patient for turning off their machine. It's a comedy of errors, but if you make it out alive, it can lead to some doozies as far as stories go. Maybe my godmother will write a book about it now. She's got a killer wit, so I bet whatever she writes would be hilarious.  


I feel like I'm kind of back to neutral again after the last month. Things are different, but better. 

Kitteh is here. And other news.

New kitteh in the howwwse.

Name: Beatrix
Age: ehhh, just under a year?
Energy level: through the roof.
How she handles meeting an 11 year old nearly 20 pound male cat?: We shall see today.


Also! Insurance says I totaled my car and they're giving me more money than I expected, so I might have a new (to me) car come December. Got my eye on another Subaru in a car lot in town.


I had begun the week determined to throw off the awful of last week and have an awesome week. So far, so good! But still could get better if my godmother would get released from the hospital. She is still in ICU (boo). She might not get to go home for Thanksgiving now and they won't let us bring our T-giving dinner to her (although, actually, we're just having meatloaf...so, perhaps hospital mystery meat is not really that different. Happy Thanksgiving?).

No matter. Send good thoughts up yonder regarding those stuck in hospitals over the holidays, si?