It was just a hiatus, turns out.
Try as I might I can’t stay away from the call of the blank page and I need as many formats as I can get, apparently, so I can:
And there’s just something so un-Wordpress about Tumblr.
In true calamity fashion, I’ve just completed a seven page paper for tomorrow night’s class. Don’t let it seem like I might even be ahead of myself. That shit would wait for tomorrow afternoon if I didn’t have to work. Just pending some printing drama and the absence of every stapler in the world, I’m exactly where I always find myself twenty-four hours before a paper or project of any magnitude is due.
I caught myself thinking it really wouldn’t matter so much if I got a C or a D in my Cultural Anthropology class, so I long as I collected another three units toward the 5482482148239712 remaining.
In two days we end the five month stay in the smallest room of my parents’ house and unload our storage unit into a sparkly new condo. To summarize what it’s been like living with seven others plus two Jack Russells, two cats, a turtle and a Beta fish, I’ll keep it light:
…in all honesty, the Beta totally didn’t deserve that.
-CJ
An embarrassing amount of years ago, my dad got me a really nice photo printer. In the many moves I’ve made and borrowed computers I’ve utilized, I never hooked it up. And still it sat, sealed in it’s original box, at the top of the pantry or linen or coat closet (whatever it is) for the last three years at 2B until recently, when I pulled it down, tore it open and followed the instructions carefully to install it. Naturally, now it is too old and my laptop is too new and they are not compatible. I figured there would be some sort of update I could download from the Canon website but I’ve had no luck. Now this beautiful printer is back in its box, much to Mo’s dismay, and I have this horrible guilt about never having used it back when it was expensive. Now I’d be lucky to fetch forty bucks for it on craigslist, me thinks.
When said box was empty:
I should really call those posts “Mo In, On & Around Stuff.”
For Cinco de Mayo, I opted out of tacos and beer with the ladies and pulled a double workout. Can you believe that shit? After I rewarded myself with a little red wine, I got a tempting invite via text to hit the gay bar for a drag show. Despite planning to stay in for the night, I hustled into something clean and did a sloppy little number with my hair to go cheer on some queens. It was a damn good show, as always. The beer was flat and gross but you couldn’t beat the company. One of the girls and I hit the punk rock bar on the way home for some free drinks. I’m not sure how we pulled that off. We picked up greasy, salty food for the ride home and I was up for work three hours later.
Today’s my broseph’s secondy-second birthday. He’s going to get all beered out at a dive in hometown. I probably will not be clinking pitchers with him but I’m talking about his day of days on the interwebs, so I did my part.
-CJ
Dear website,
I’m going to change the way I utilize this place. I usually come here with a plan of action… or at least a topic. Or a picture of my cat on top of something new*. And then I ramble on and take that topic to its wordy death. My inspiration comes and goes but the coming part is most often during times of bloglessness. As in, I’m working or driving or half awake in the middle of the night. I need to make use of the time that I do have for writing, ideas or no ideas, and just go with it. There’s plenty of prompt websites (I especially like oneword.com) and I’ve noticed in keeping a paper journal that I write in weekly, I can go on and on once I get started. I just need to get some words out to keep a steady head.
*SPEAKING OF
Yeah. A golf club.
Please note angry secondary cat in the background.
My apologies in advance for any lack of structure you may find here in coming posts.
-CJ
Filed under: pets
I suggest the hardcover, limited edition, leather bound Mo.
-CJ
Over the weekend, we rented Red* and grabbed some libations for a night at home.
Of note, the reason that Corona six-pack might seem so super on sale is because it is CORONITA. Which is about half the fluid ounces of a normal bottle of beer. As I loaded a six-pack into the fridge for Josh, my hand seemed to dwarf the tiny bottles and I asked tentatively, “Are these… smaller… than normal?”
Indeed, very much so.
*It has been so long since I’ve seen an entertaining movie. But Red was worthy.
Next thing I knew, I was mad-scramble cleaning because four friends were on their way over. So much for movie night.
At one point, myself and two ladies (the Girlfriends) were at the kitchen table, while the gentlemen (the Boyfriends) made a second liquor store run for more mixers and flavored, girly cigars for yours truly. We were talking loudly and laughing and such when a strange and foul smell came over the room. I looked to the small bar attached to the kitchen counter, where we keep the cat food to prevent Lucy from eating it all. Furby was face down in his bowl, mashing his flat face against the food and trying to lap some kibble into his mouth (a hilarious struggle I enjoy watching, while Josh takes pity and piles up the food in little mountains for them) and his tail was completely covering a large, purple ceramic bowl that holds a big lavendar candle. That was lit.
His ass snuffed my candle.
Lavendar tainted cat ass hair. In my kitchen.
It took a little while to air it out. When Josh got home, I told him the story by way of saying that the smell was not Furby’s butt hair. Nope.
Oh, the death glare.
It has been made clear that he loves those kiddens more than he loves Kiddo and I combined. I’m working on accepting this.
-CJ
Occasionally I make the short walk across the courtyard and up the stairs to my neighbors’ house, where we enjoy cocktails and BBQ’d goods on their balcony. From across the way and up, I look down into my place, where Lucy waits patiently at the door, looking back at me with big, sad, dumb, dog eyes. Mo waits in the window sill while Furby rubs his giant cat balls on my pillow, purring, the bitch is gone!
What else can I see from there? The balcony over my house and how badly it is sinking. I wish I had a picture of it, but the whole thing was slanted down, the right side leaning heavily and menacingly over my porch. We often joke about how it’s definitely coming down some day but like most things, I didn’t worry too much about it.
One afternoon when I was working from home last week, my neighbor stood outside my front door on his cell phone, speaking in clearly urgent, almost angry tones. He called me to the door when he had hung up and explained that he’d been just shy of demanding our landlord come hold the falling balcony up with his own hands, lest it fall into my living room and deter me from watching my Oprah.
You can brush it off and brush it off but when someone who knows what they’re talking about expresses worry, shit gets real and fast.
A general contractor was out the next morning and this is what I came home to:
(Photo titled: WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE)
(Alternate title: Crime scene – Disgruntled calamity shanks boyfriend for throwing dirty socks NEXT TO the hamper)
From my front door. Note the termite rot I’ve disregarded for nearly three years.
During the repairs, the friendly handydudes went a little too deep…
And this popped through Kiddo’s bedroom wall.
(The verbiage I just used screams “glory hole,” no?)
After one week solid of coughing and sniffling with so much frequency, I wouldn’t step foot into the office and so worked all week from my bed or kitchen table, I had to let my team know I would be out again this morning. No, not because I’m still sick, the balcony above me was just collapsing in on the place and there’s a hole in my drywall from when the gentlemen tried to save our lives.
That’s all.
When the wall-fixer arrived this morning, I ushered Lucy into my bedroom and closed the door, lest she bark his ankles to death. Mo ran ahead of us both, stopped dead center in the room to swing his head 180 degrees (he’s definitely part owl) to face me with saucer eyes. How could I not warn him of a stranger in the home and the obvious imminent danger he hath broughten?!
He seemed to say.
All’s well. How you doin’?
-CJ
ps, Mo on Bop-It!
Filed under: pets
Mo on tray
Mo on sandals
Mo on jacket
Mo on detangler
Mo on laptop
Mo on homework
Mo on weight
Mo on lunchbox
Mo on rice
and on that note… He’s so fluffly, I’m gonna diiie!
Filed under: pets
Mo will climb into or onto anything that will sit still. He makes the strangest cubbies and nooks his home. I’m convinced if we left a bed of nails unattended, he would stretch out on it.
Mo on mail
Mo in basket
Mo on shoebox
Mo in pantry
Mo in desk
Mo on purse
Mo on cardboard
I fucking love this cat.
-CJ
First thing this morning I made a small batch of wild berry muffins and a small batch of blueberry muffins. (From a mix, but still involving measuring and ovenating.) And as I type this now, I have a big ass stir fry simmering with at least one homegrown vegetable.
I HARDLY EVEN KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE.
On a very bright note, two weeks ago our near and dear fuzzy old man, Furby, drifted off into the night by way of the dog door. We’ve since posted about twenty color pictures of him throughout the neighborhood, deeming him lost and leaving our cell phone numbers up for the pranking (yes, this happened). Last night we received a call from someone ‘who knows where he is’ but ‘doesn’t have him’ and wanted a reward, which we hadn’t offered. Though we would pay to have the Furb back home, it seems so ugly to demand payment of your neighbors for their pet. However, the scheme did not continue (be it the threatening message my drunken boyfriend left on the caller ID number…) and this morning a woman let us know that she had him safe and sound and we could swoop him up when we were ready. We were poolside at my parents’ house but jumped into dry clothes and headed out shortly after.
He’s slightly thinner and much more vocal and HOME.
ahaha
-CJ
When I got back from Vegas, newly acquired boyfriend* tugged my sleeve incessantly until I followed him into the bedroom, where my dresser was pulled away from the wall. I gave him quizzical eyebrows and he told me to manuever my way behind the dresser and look underneath. While I enjoy surprises, I didn’t like where this was going. I had little desire to see what could only be two years of dust and dog hair. He convinced me to take a peek.
Under the dresser was a firepoint white Persian (or Himalayan, I have no idea) cat. He was terrified.
After a moment of OMGWTF?! boyfriend opened the closet with what could only be described as a shit-eating-grin. There, tucked back behind the hanging clothes, on top of a shelf was a gray and white Persian. Or Himalayan.
(The tweakish firepoint is Mo. The grumpy old man is Furby. We intended to change their given names but what the hell, they work.)
I leave for one weekend and the boy seeks out his dream pet via Craigslist and ends up bribed into taking two-for-one, since the younger boy would be lonely without the older boy (his father).
I’d slap the motherfucker if I wasn’t COMPLETELY smitten:
How could I refuse these smashy, angry faces fluffin’ around like they own the place?
-CJ
*Officially official.
