Archive for 2017

Jan 07 2017

Put a Bird on It

Published by under Country Life,Weather

Stormy Saturday to you! The wind is howling, the glass wind chimes are tinkling frantically, the frogs are peeping with joy at the pouring rain, and I’m waiting for the power to go out. It has already blinked off and on again twice, so I’m writing on borrowed time.

[Update: Power went out at 6 am. No estimated time of restoration as of Monday at 7:30 am.]

Today is the saddest day of the year: the one when I take down the Christmas ornaments and lights, leaving the house looking stripped and dreary after a month of sparkle and shine. There should be another winter festival that calls for lights and fun in the depths of darkness. Ideas, anyone?

I had one less ornament to put away, since Clyde smashed the glittery heart shaped ornament to welcome the New Year. I went to the shop where it was bought to see if I could replace it, but like me (and Clyde), it’s one of a kind. I looked around the shop to see if I could find something else I liked as much*, but I couldn’t. As I left the shop, though, I saw whales spouting in the ocean on their annual migration to Mexico, and I wouldn’t have seen them if Clyde hadn’t broken my heart.

I wasn’t really intending to put the heart ornament away, but now I had a hanger with no ornament. I decided to hang the little bird ornament on it**:

If Dad’s bird can be on the eternal Christmas in Dark Gulch all year, surely the matching one I got can be on display in my house most of the year. I will move it to the tree when I put it up eleven months from now***.

A YEAR AGO: Appreciating the magic moments.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Technical problems reared their ugly heads.

*I told the giver about my failed attempt to replace her lost gift, and she said that although the shop had lots of lovely ornaments, that one was the only one that looked like me. And she was right.

**The little card with it says “Bonne Année”, or “Happy New Year”, so I don’t have to put it away just yet.

***With Rob’s help. He worked on the tree after I took off the adornments, so that all the branches will fit on it and it will look much better.

2 responses so far

Jan 04 2017

Night and Day

Published by under Calamity Suzy,Cats,Work

Nothing like a bad night’s sleep to set you up for a weird day at work, I always say.

Clyde the cat decided the middle of the night was an excellent time to leap on my unsuspecting form. Like most males, of the feline persuasion or otherwise, he is decidedly pro-boobs*, persistently making them both his landing place and launching pad, to their owner’s varying levels of discomfort. In this case, I was unable to brace for impact, and my reaction affected his dismount, in which a back claw scratched the hell out of my nose. The Russian judge gave him a 1.0 and I applied Kleenex to the surprising amount of blood. Anything on your face just bleeds like crazy.

Despite my justifiable annoyance and Clyde’s characteristic insouciance – he was equally unperturbed when he celebrated the arrival of the shiny New Year by smashing a shiny new gift which had every reason to be on the shelf where he had no business being – I tried to get back to sleep. I was just beginning to drift away when I realized I was perfectly positioned to take full advantage of the leak in my ceiling. Given the height of the ceiling, the drips were able to achieve maximum velocity, and were able to achieve positively Clyde-like results of surprise and impact. I got a towel to catch the drips and relocated my head to other side of the bed.

Clyde, of course, was fast sleep through all of this. And the alarm.

The next day, I arrived at work to discover that my boss’s sidelight window beside her office door had been shattered by a person or persons unknown. I also had a phone call from the landlord of one of our doctors, complaining of, shall we say, some hygiene issues.

In disposing of lint from the dryer – they share laundry facilities and live on the same property – she discovered a very large and very dead rat in the garbage can. In addition to this non-paying rodential guest, he has failed to take out the garbage for months and his collection of detritus in the laundry room/garage/morgue features a moldering animal skin, or possibly skins.

When asked about this, he said that an injured deer had died near the garage. As anyone would in coming across free roadkill on the premises, he had butchered it and put the meat in the freezer. He considered the problem solved. I explained that memories of the deer remained in the skin and that it, the garbage, and rodents of any kind, alive or dead, needed to be removed from the premises before his landlord removed him. He promised to talk to his landlord.

It is amazing to me that he got through medical school. Though not that his daughter is a vegetarian.

**As Xander Harris aptly observed in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Men like sports. Men watch the action movie, they eat of the beef, and they enjoy to look at the bosoms.”

A YEAR AGO: Feeling powerless. ‘Tis the season!

3 responses so far

Jan 01 2017

New Year’s Day

Published by under Cats,Country Life

New Year’s Day arrived with a bang at Suzy Manor – literally.

Clyde was exploring the impressive collection of Christmas cards on the shelves by the tree, and in his excitement, he managed to knock off and smash the beautiful little ornament which was one of the gifts I saved to open on Christmas evening:

img_3782

I vacuumed it up sadly. Clyde, of course, had no idea that he had upset the help along with the ornament. I will ask the giver where she got it and see if I can replace it. Not a great way to start the new year. I hope it’s not an omen or anything.

On the bright side, I failed to have a hangover, despite my best efforts on New Year’s Eve. Megan came by and we drank champagne and Cointreau as we watched “The Princess Bride”. It had been a long time since I’d seen it, and it was as delightful as ever.

We paused the movie to watch the ball drop in New York, marveling at the crowds, the utter lack of restroom facilities in Times Square, and the ugliness of the official hats. We also watched the new year arrive in San Francisco, with fireworks over the Bay. It’s been a while since I stayed up late enough to see the new year in on both coasts.

A YEAR AGO: I was much more industrious than I was this year.

3 responses so far

« Prev