Man oh Manischewitz, tomorrow I go back to work. It’s too soon. I’d like to hibernate and return to my desk at the unnamed university in April, though even bears check their voicemail in March. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to feel motivated to increase the Gross National Product without hand sanitizer, but go back I will. At the moment, a little black cat snores beside me and another claws the house’s architectural details. I will miss this tranquility as I do battle with the Parking Department, law unto itself and bane of everyone’s existence. Still, it’ll be fun to don my armor and wind up the trebuchet again. After all, those cows don’t lob themselves over castle walls!

Fucking Blogger! This happens every New Year’s, when Siobhan heads for a more sympathetic jurisdiction. Last year, Blogger and PIC’s host quit talking to each other over a family recipe dispute, I guess. I mean, who knows? But when the pie hit the buffet table, the cinnamon flew and sticky fingerprints still dot the blog, which is stuck. Last night, Pete and I stayed up late into the night, talking with with my seasonally distressed stepmommy Darla, and this morning, nobody slept. It was a hard, restless night; so naturally, today the family again celebrated Christmas. Rejoice! I’m exhausted and Jewish but damn it, there’s chateaubriand!

Tonight, Pete and I had dinner with Pete’s friend Angela who lives in Los Angeles and takes care of a blind friend in Allentown. Angela’s so stressed she may snap like a twig underfoot if something doesn’t change. By the time we were finished eating, I said, “Pookie, you are too nice. What you need is a club. When people steal $10,000 from your blind friend, you club them. Bonk! Discipline is crucial at this age.” Still being too nice, Angela said, “You have to understand they’re genuinely stupid. They’re not malicious.” I said, “I don’t have to understand anything about thieving relatives. If they steal again, will you call the cops?” I mention this because one day I was avoiding doing something about something really important when I found this gorgeous image of Russ Tamblyn sailing through the air. See, I remember Russ Tamblyn most vividly as the odd doctor on Twin Peaks, and despite my early fixation on Hollywood musicals, I had forgotten Tamblyn in West Side Story. That brought me up short. Sometimes, you remember how things turned out and not so much where they started.

Her birthday’s coming up. Can you get a club monogrammed?

Tata: I’ve been weighing my compost, which is just quirky enough that I thought I should mention it.
Daria: What? Yes…
Tata: It’s unscientific because the scale belongs to Ted, the tenant who is also Mom’s chiropractor and who is wrong about everything, and the scale cannot be calibrated.
Daria: What do you mean he’s wrong about everything?
Tata: We go to Wegman’s and buy vegetables that cost a fortune and when we see him at the house he says, “Oh! Wegman’s! Everything’s so cheap there!” And let me tell you, he’s got some very stinky ideas about women.
Daria: He’s a good chiropractor, though. Mom says he really helps her.
Tata: Yeah. So weighing the compost is like performance art with broken numbers and an audience of mushy pineapple.

In the space of four days, I took outside 5.09 pounds of compostable material. That included two cardboard egg cartons I shredded by hand while I was steaming mad about Ted’s generic bitter pronouncements about the nature of male-female relations. The pieces are very tiny. They’ll turn into something useful a lot sooner than Ted’s bullshit will.

The giant kitten, whose name this week is Lulu, is very pushy. She wants our attention a lot of the time, she wants the good scratchy-scratchy nails and she’s first to the food bowl, which is working Topaz’s last nerve. Working Pete’s is finding cat yak all over the place. “Whoa!” he says, “Help!” It doesn’t stink, so clean up is easy for me, but the downside is: it doesn’t stink, so sometimes we don’t find it right away. Last night, the kitten lay between us on the couch as we watched TV, then went off on some urgent kitten business. Some time later, I noticed she’d left us a surprise. A pile of cat yak between us. Surprise! We both sat there for a moment, staring, because neither of us heard, saw or smelled a cat tossing her waffles between us on the couch, so it was impossible for it to be there. It was so impossible, Pete couldn’t see it for a moment because the colors of the regurgitated cat food matched the Mexican blanket on the couch, which was a thoughtful touch on the kitten’s part, really.

Detail. Light Bulbs, 2008 72×96″ Depicts 320,000 light bulbs, equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage (inefficient wiring, computers in sleep mode, etc.).

Though I am a delighted homebody who weatherstrips windows and doors for fun, I can judge with the gimlet eye of an art critic. This exhibit is worth your time and consideration. Now please excuse me. I’ve got to help install something made of rubber, foam and recognition of the obvious.

Looking back on her career, she told Playboy in 1998: “I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It’s just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous.”

Thank you, Miss Bettie.

This morning’s wild-eyed wisdom comes from the Kids In the Hall.

Sashay forth – sensibly!

I haven’t given up blogging. In fact, over the next couple of days, I predict you’ll remember why you tolerate my neglect. You will. Believe me! Anyhow, this morning, I have to attempt to pay attention to …something, I don’t know what, at the library, so please enjoy this picture of an artichoke. Because why not.

For Miss Sasha, Mr. Sasha and Panky, the North Dakota winter began last week. In New Jersey, I walked to work this sunny morning.

Soooo tired I might, in an unguarded moment, forget to ask who’s at the door.