Why I Have Not Been Blogging

How's this for an excuse?


That is the right humerus bone in my body that I snapped in two while staying at John and Patty's for Thanksgiving. People keep asking me how I did it. I've tried different versions of the story--saving a bunch of orphans and kittens while on roller skates from a marble factory that was burning down, ultimate fighting battle, knocking old ladies out of my way to be the first into Macy's--but the truth is that I cracked it by missing the bed--thought I was jumping into it, but was really only jumping near it and effectively cracking my bone in the process. It honestly didn't/doesn't hurt that much. Amazing. But it's irritating. Because I can't do lots of things, like write, or type very well, or brush my teeth that great, or do crossword puzzles, or open wine bottles, or shave my legs or armpits, or cut my food, or use chopsticks, or take out the recycling, or bite the fingernails of my right hand or tie my shoes or put on a bra and even getting the splint on and off is a problem. I'd like to write to the guy who made the protective cover (it's not in a cast; it's this expensive plastic thing) and ask him how he would suggest someone with only one mobile hand should be able to read an attachment that's three inches long and falls behind her back? The other pain in the ass is that I have to sleep on my back until it heals completely. Try sleeping on your back. It feels as though you are going to be attacked at any moment (which would be true if I were letting the cats sleep with me. I can't. They're banished to the basement.

Cat Frippery

Both Lisa Marie and John were kind enough to come over this past Sunday and remodel some things in the house. John cute a giant hole in the basement door (to accommodate the giant Henri) and he also hung the mirror in my bedroom that I bought at Circle Thrift for $20. Lisa Marie and I worked for about 5 or so hours on the brand new, redecorated, restyled, and re-carpeted kitty palace. It is resplendent.

First, the cat door. I wanted to put this on so that I could keep the basement door shut, since that's where the litter box is and I don't want the smell wafting up into the kitchen. But I haven't yet put the flap on it b/c I'm not sure they're smart enough to go through it. Well, I know Ernesto is, but not so sure about the other two.

This is a view of the living room with the new coffee table. Still no sofa.


And the new table and chairs all set up. I haven't hung any pictures b/c I'm scared to mess up the walls. Liz and Luke are coming for a visit this weekend, so I'm sure they will help me through it.

Ta-DA! That's fat Emma Carol getting ready to jump off the top level.

And the two of them. This version is at least a foot lower than the first one. We took out an entire story and it's still huge.

And Ernesto, alone. Please note the sad little red mouse toy on the carpet, brought there, I suppose, as an offering to the goddesses who made this lovely perch.

The Hired Help

Ethnics delivered this beautiful, grown-up furniture for free on Tuesday. The store is sadly going out of business and consequently, most of their items are 40%I haven't had a chance to take pictures of it in the home, but this is the table top--made of teak from old bridges.

And the chairs--I bought four because, you know, of all the entertaining I do.


This is the Siddhartra statute that Jenn Bing purchased.


Lovely coffee table constructed from old railroad cars.

And this is sort of what the table and chairs look like.

So, the house-cleaning lady came for the first time yesterday while I was at work. I could tell that she'd been there even before I got into the house, because the smell of cleaning fluid was wafting from the rooms. She organized one of my bookshelves by setting up all of the photo frames and cleaned the coffee pot really well and swept the basement and fanned the magazines out on the coffee table. Totally, totally, totally worth it.I am becoming a snob. Soon, I will become Republican.

Sitting on the Floor of My New Home

That is because I don't yet have a couch, having left behind the shitty brown one for the neighbor's to snatch up (which they did--I noticed that when I returned to clean, their old couch was on the side of the house and mine had vanished). I am waiting for two things right now--the cleaning lady to find my home, and the furniture dude to deliver the new tables I bought on Saturday at Ethnics. I am certain they will both show up at the same time and I'll have to juggle the awkwardness somehow. The last week has been crazy and tiring. I hate moving. It sucked, even though I had Mambo Movers, because of course, I had to take over two loads of stuff beforehand and so climbed about 500 sets of stairs. Then there's going over to clean the old place, which I did, but I wouldn't say it was a stellar job. I cleaned for three hours, but I didn't spackle or scrub the floors like I probably should have. And then there was the cable dude who convinced me to not run the cable upstairs, but instead get a router that I now can't figure out how to install. And Lisa Marie came over on Sunday and we spent about three hours disassembling the cat castle to make it more manageable and to get rid of all of the icky cat fur. Now it's naked and broken, but it'll be better if we can get it together. I've decided also that the bathroom is too small and so would like to use the Obama money to expand it into the tiny third bedroom. Would that be insane? To give up a small, small room for a bigger, more manageable bathroom? I don't know.

Other things that happened:

1. As soon as the movers finished up, I immediately locked myself out of the house. One of the movers said he would try to get into the back. In the meantime, I figured out that I could almost get in through the letter slot and so I used this screw driver to remove it and, just as I was opening the front door, Mark, the mover, came bounding down, having scaled the back alley wall, climbed up on the air conditioner, and shimmied up the side wall to the window in the second bedroom that was unlocked. So, it was kind of anticlimactic in a way, because he didn't get to be the hero. As compensation, I gave him my Raleigh bike, since I realized it's too heavy for me to feasibly take up and down the basement stairs (of course, now SEPTA is on strike and so it would've been nice to have the bike available...). I asked him to please not come back and kill me later.

2.Last night, I managed to set off the burglar alarm for about twenty minutes. I thought it had been deactivated, but it hadn't, and so it screamed for a long, long, long time while I scrambled to find the phone number of the previous owners, tried to call Brinks, tried to call Jeanne, and emailed the owners to beg them to call me with the code, which they finally did, thank God.

Joining the Bourgeois Class

So, I bought a house yesterday. Strange feeling. On the one hand, I feel really good about it, because it seems like a very grown up thing to do and I also never thought I would own a place in Philadelphia. On the other hand, it scares the hell out of me because I don't know a thing about water heaters or winterizing your home or putting sealant of the roof or caulking, for God's sake. But I'm sure I'll figure it out. I couldn't ask for a smoother, easier process and the previous owners were so totally cool and giving--left behind these great decorations and many other things that will make the move much easier. I'm not taking my crappy sofa or my crappy chairs. I'd love to also get rid of the coffee table and the TV stand and the kitchen table, but I'll wait a little bit more on that.

Okay, so here are some pictures from our trip to Chinoteague/Assateague Island last week. Prepare for ponies. For instance, there is a pony in here somewhere. Can you find him?

And now find the kitty...This cat was at the bed and breakfast. He is shy. He is called Fraidy Cat.

The woman who wrote the children's book, Misty of Chinoteague, wrote it at the b&b we stayed at. I believe this is a statue of Misty or one of the other horses.

Part II.


No frills on vacation, no make-up, no hair mousse and yet we are still beautiful.

We took a walk to the marshes the first day, and were duly warned by the Pony Chairman not to touch or pet or feed apples or even look for too long at the wild ponies.

Bird in flight.

Little sandpipers who sometime stand on one leg and freak you out, worrying that the bird is lame.

First horse spotting.

And closer up.
And closer still. This one would definitely upset the Pony Chairman.

You can pet this black cat from the b&b. He is called one-eye for reasons that will become more obvious.


See. She has one gimpy eye. She was nice though, but had a weird way of laying her ears back when you pet her.

The seagulls in Virginia are huge.

Manny on the beach liking to be bare foot.

On the boat. It was freezing.

The lighthouse. These pictures may be out of order.

A bird.

Ponies ahead.
They all sort of look the same.


You can buy them when they are foals.


Pony drinking sewage salt water.


We almost made it to sunset.

Note picturesque birds in the water.

Our captain, Spider Kelly.

You can't really see this, but here's the high school in Chinoteague, where the mascot is...Ponies.

And a grave stone with ponies on it.

And a vanity plate.
And ducks. Very loud ducks.

The ones who stayed inland were not in danger of being shot during duck hunting season, which I believe was going on while we were there?


Cotton. Manny picked a bunch of it and then stuck it in his ears when the ducks got too raucous.

View of the scaredy cat from the porch above.


I was too frightened to get on, imagined us both hurtling off the side.


Manny was not.
Scottie dog.

And his friends, the terriers.

Dogs make it hard to simplify.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled photographs. Mary, Jesus, and a Jack-o-Lantern.


Spooky window.

With cat detail.
Witch door? Who's on first?

Stacked Jacks.
That's it for now. Will be moving in two days. Don't feel sad about it.

Things I May or May Not Miss

Okay, so I have about a little less than two weeks before I move into the new house and so I'm contemplating the things that I might miss about this place. Hmm...The first thing I think about missing is also the thing I can't wait to get away from, namely, the stray cats I've been feeding and looking out for over the last two years. The little orange mommy cat who I captured twice before succeeding in getting her fixed. She appears almost every morning, and now lets me pet her. Usually, her tom cat buddy follows, this formidable cat who is often bleeding somewhere--either from his ear, or his nose, or his back. He frequently shows up with burrs in his tail too, which I can pick out sometimes. He lets me pet him fully and has only lashed out maybe once when Ernesto agitated him. I don't know what will happen to them after I leave. Will anyone feed them? Will they wonder where I've gone and feel betrayed? Probably not, but I worry about how they will survive the winter. I guess I will also miss the neighbor girls, these Mexican children who always want to pet my cats and yell, "Let us see your cats!" if they see me returning from work.

Won't miss:

*Tons of garbage on the streets
*Smell of cat pee emanating from the back patio
*Yelling from the back yard neighbors and their torturing of the cats they seldom feed
*Drop ceilings on the second floor
*Tiny bathroom with cruise ship sized sink
*Having no closet space
*Lack of washer/dryer
*Going to the bank at the first of every month to get a money order for rent.

I think I'm learning that I'm glad to be moving. There's not anything I will really miss. That seems a little sad to me. That I would live in a house for almost three years that has more things wrong with it than things I will miss. Still, this house has been good for me in lots of ways. It's really cheap rent, has a full basement to accommodate the 17 litter boxes I need for the numerous cats. The street has never been a problem; no loud partiers or incessantly barking dogs. The worst of the noise is the occasional spilling of loud Mexican music from a car dropping off neighbors.

The universe has answered one of my biggest and most specific requests. On Friday, when I was leaving for work, I noticed that someone at the end of my street had left out this elaborate, three story cat scratching post/kitty jungle gym. It's torn up, but not too bad, and it's exactly what I was asking Lisa Marie and John to make for me as a house-warming gift. I dragged it down the street, trying not to worry about what the neighbors might think, and somehow managed to wrangle it up the steps. It weighs about 100 pounds. The cats immediately took to it, especially Ernesto who behaved like a very good cat and started scratching it immediately. Since I'm leaving my icky sofa behind and planning to buy a nice leather one that doesn't accumulate tons of cat hair, I will need some cat-scratching alternative. LM has agreed to recover it as a gift. It's still going to look hideous in the living room, but maybe we can try to make it look cool. No, it will never look cool.

Spoke on a panel at the Philadelphia Stories sponsored "Push to Publish" conference held at Rosemont College this weekend and learned a few things from the fellow panelists--things I need to remember to tell my writing students on Monday:

1. In the first draft of you story, your initial beginning is probably not the real beginning. It's the beginning you needed to find your way into the story. Oftentimes, the real start occurs near the end of the story, sometimes even in the last line.

2. Don't write about the day that nothing happened. Write about the day that something really changed.

3. Not all real life stories translate well into fiction. In fact, they often don't. You might say, "But that's how it really happened," as a defense to the piece and even if this is so, it still doesn't mean it's a good fiction piece. We don't go to newspapers to get our stories--don't dictate exactly what happened on page 5 of the local news and expect it to work.

4. Before you can go off and write a meta-narrative or a story that flaunts convention in some radical way, you have to first understand the form and structure of what makes a good short story. Even avaunt garde artists and abstract artists first learn how to draw a human figure. You need to know how it's done well before you veer off into uncharted territory.

And then there was an NPR story on Fresh Air the other day, an interview with Michael Chabon where he says that he knows he's writing something of significance if it makes him uncomfortable. So, rule #5, Write what makes you squirm. It probably means you're getting somewhere close to the truth of something important.

My view at Work + more Halloween windows

This photo may at first look like the squirrel has cannibalized one of its own, but it's actually eating a piece of pepperoni pizza that it must have found on the Green, or else it attacked a first-year student who wasn't paying close attention. You have to be vigilant with these squirrels; they're afraid of nothing and will approach you at any moment for food or spare change.

I thought squirrels were vegetarians? I never did see this one eat the pepperoni though, so maybe they just eat around it.


Two windows below from the same house.

The front door of the house opened while I was taking the second picture and I gestured like, I love your windows and then beat it.

I probably took a picture of this last year too. I just think it's cute.