Paint the Sky Upon the Ceiling

Bob made a good point in comments: the composter wasn’t cheap. Let’s not laugh that off. As people of modest means and vivid imaginations, we wouldn’t have had the cash except for two little things. One: moving afforded us a little found money because we saved like wild animals. Two: when I spend more than $100 at a time, I feel faint. Pete and I talked over what the property’s needs might be, and I shopped carefully. Very carefully. More carefully than that. The result: a handful of really good prices on the method and model I wanted more than shiny shiny jewels, and we bought the one with the best shipping. It’s an investment in making the crappy pulverized shale into better soil, and putting our money where our mouths are, ecologically. That is an image you should immediately scrub from your brain pan.

The house is old and has other needs, too. For instance, Pete’s climbing into a wall today to stuff insulation into a crevice I wouldn’t touch without a hazmat suit and an Iditarod dog, but that’s me. And speaking of me, I can’t figure out how to carpet stairs without a powerpoint presentation.

Tata: This is the fourth store we’ve been to and we can’t seem to find square throw rugs. Where are they?
Department Manager: That section over there has throw rugs.
Tata: That’s true, but I want a square rug. Do you have those?
Department Manager: Yes.
Tata: Where are they?
Department Manager: Over there with the carpeting.
Tata: No. I don’t want carpeting. I have a landing on a staircase. It’s about 36″x36″ and I want to put a little throw rug on it.
Department Manager: You can buy those online.
Tata: I’m in your store right now. I’d like to buy it, take it home and put it on my floor today, preferably so I can jump up and down on it and make little noise. Also: my cats should enjoy the fluffy warmth and shed all over it.
Department Manager: What you need to do is go to a carpet specialty store where they do binding and you can buy a custom carpet and they’ll do the binding and then you can have the carpet but we don’t have that here and I can’t help you.

If I turn and look at Pete, he will tell the Department Manager that she should go shag herself, not to mention Berber and Scotchguard, and I just can’t picture myself getting the bum’s rush at Lowe’s before the cocktail hour.

Tata: Thank you. Pete, dahhhhlink, we need friction tape, possibly all of it.
Pete: She didn’t hear a word you said.
Tata: Well, I used several at the same time. So: no. But let’s not dwell, when I have a Buy One, Get One Free coupon for Febreze! During the season when everyone stays home and farts, our house will smell delightful and our cats will be perplexed…

To Parade Your Snazz

Creamy, chewy Christ on a cracker! Grab a Kleenex and clutching pearls, Poor Impulsives!

Heavens to goddamn Mergatroid, my girlfriend’s a half-eaten cheeseburger! My boyfriend’s been plated and sucked clean of sour cream! Who knows who ate ’em first! Whatever will I dooooooooo?

Kids, Auntie Ta’s never steered you wrong. No, the sled’s not at all going to rocket down the hill, across the frozen yard and voooosh! into space, and you won’t even a little slam into the street and the snowbank on the other side. So hop on.

Let’s be completely honest. Your partner in chem lab makes your insides titrate, and it’s a different world now than in the exotic antiquity when your parents and I smoked pot with our gym teacher. They’ll deny it, since old age and sloth are a whole lot easier to live with than the memory of how we used to get tanked and drive the farm hills with the lights off, because the idea that you might scares all dainty shit out of them. And with good reason. We were young and stupid, but you are on camera almost every minute of your day. Are you under arrest yet?

Yep, your parents fight off night terrors imagining what theories you’re testing with that lab partner. They’ve become the kind of spineless ninnies they once despised, but the change is not irreversible. You can be brave for them. “But, Auntie Ta,” you say, “my parents want me to save myself for marriage. Stop laughing!”

Kids, please don’t make me tell you about how your parents learned special macrame knots at scout camp or about those parties in the prop room that involved a can of Spam and tap shoes. You’re going to date – preferably outside of your high school – and dating means coming into physical contact with another human being, on whom you will practice the little tricks that will make your adult sex life happy and well-adjusted. Cover up, pets! Just – don’t tell your parents, don’t get any diseases and don’t make any babies. They’re less hilarious than in the movies, and they’d remind your parents of the prom. Which reminds me: how’re your big brothers and sisters, anyhow?

Look, chances are super-good you’ll get nekkid and do the happy cha cha cha, then you’ll break up and feel heartbroken, and after that you’ll get nekkid and do the happy cha cha cha with someone else. You might not even be all that heartbroken, but anyway: the point is that worrying about where your Sweet Baboo has ba-been is a ba-big waste of time. Plus, what you’ve been safely up to is your own mmm-mmm-mmm biz.

Don your gloves and mittens, kids. You don’t have to lose your cool or your nerve when you get rid of that nonsense no one needs. So when your parents experiment with this crazy abstinence and shame thing, don’t forget it’s not too late for you to raise them right.

Friday Cat Blogging: the Low Spark Edition

Some folks want diamonds. Some want money, power or sex with rubbery girls resembling Britney Spears. But I am not like all the others. In my heart of hearts, I wanted a composter. Yesterday, it arrived.

The Sun-Mar 200, reseplendant in our dining room, and about the size of an Oscar the Grouch trash can. From the manual – don’t worry, I didn’t read it, no one in my family can read a manual, but if I had, it would’ve said:

The Sun-Mar 200 is a continuous composter with a 6 bushel (50 gallon) capacity. It’s excellent for composting kitchen scraps and garden trimmings.

The AutoFlow® system allows material to continuously “flow” or move through a special double-drum setup. Heavier material settles to the bottom. Lighter, decomposed material finds its way to the top and eventually enters the inner drum.

Using the flow system, finished composed is “forced” out when you open the port and rotate. Dispensing compost is simple!

These devices are so popular it’s fairly standard to order one and have to call up the vendor and tell them you paid for it, could they actually ship it, please? They wanted a three-week window, but no way! Mama’s gotta compost! By the way, after all this fuss, the FedEx delivery guy said, “That’s a composter? And you had to sign for it?” Because it’s not any composter. It’s my composter, and I wanted it bad. But don’t worry, you. Though I love the composter, it’s not serious between us. How could it be, when I am loved by beautiful cats?

I’m the torso in the middle. Pete jumped up to take this picture when Drusy, right, sat down on the blanket and Topaz, left, settled next to me. Topaz loves us with a gooey, starstruck teenybopper love that seldom includes getting close enough for autographs, so her lying down between Pete and me was quite a surprise. Drusy, meanwhile, is lying on a blanket pinched between my toes, which sounds like a strain but isn’t because Drusy practically levitates. Then the kittenpile watched TV in the dark.

Topaz and Drusy do not like the composter. They want me to be happy at home.

I am happy at home.

The Slow Parade Of Fears

I’m not 100% certain where I learned this – I think it came from Martin Cruz Smith’s novel Gorky Park, but it might have come from another novel I read in my early twenties. See: everyone seeks himself in what he or she sees. Artists endlessly reproduce themselves in their work, which people kind of know. The Mona Lisa might have been DaVinci’s self-portrait, as any sophomore art history major knows. So in Gorky Park, forensic reconstruction of a skull is undertaken by a dwarf who says to the protagonist, “Trust the freak’s eye.” We don’t have to go that far to examine an image. For instance, I missed my soaps for a few days because I was buffeted by real life so I checked in for episode recaps. There, I found this image. What the hell?

At first glance, the residents of Llanview, PA have little in common aside from their penchant for drama. Diversity is the key word in town: Cowboys and cops, the wealthy and working class, lovers and enemies mix amidst a collection of different races, religions and families. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent these disparate individuals all share the desire to triumph in the one life we have to live.

Really? Why is the banner image six white people with blond hair and – as far as I can tell – blue eyes?

Trust this freak: you now know who the graphic artist is.