On Monday I saw this on a billboard for some new store soon to open on 34th Street, and today I had to go back to take this photo. What's in a world that is Puffier for All? Discerning noses (olive oil and blood oranges, your application may be accepted), eyes that look with love...and everything, everything, with parmesan cheese on top.
Puffy get loose! This is the one during which she premieres the first-ever pirouette done by a cat, per the children's story I've been saying I have to write since, well, forever:
She's sweet like this one (tho what kind of idiot runs around in a tutu, ahem..):
It took me a way long time to find the perfect Puffelina Stones song. After debating between "Waiting on a Friend" and "Country Honk," this one wandered in on pink-paw-padded kitty feet:
In order to be like Bing and Derrick and live life more in the moment, I’ve been systematically shredding all my journals. They’re full of crap mostly, but it’s kind of a symbolic gesture of letting go of my old baggage. Anyway, I recently came across this ridonkulous entry accounting a visit to my parents’ house, written probably about 10 years ago.
What you might need to know before reading: Bizzy was my sister’s sweet cocker spaniel, and Sister Rita was a) a nun at my parents’ church and b) their good friend.
“…Mom accidentally got peanut butter on her shoes, which Bizzy licked off later during lunch when they were telling the story of Sister Rita’s false teeth…Apparently she left the “bridge” (the back ones, like the place they go on Star Trek) at my parents’ house, and Dad had to send it back to her. He wrapped it in bubble wrap and sent it first class, and Sister Rita called two weeks later asking, ‘Did you send it yet?’ Yes, of course, he said. And then all the sisters prayed to Saint Anthony, and the next day she received them in the mail.”
What does this have to do with Siamese cats? See the ceramic meezer that Derrick is posing with? Sister Rita found it hanging around the convent, knew I liked cats and asked my parents to give it to me. I love it to this day, and I figured this was a nice chance to say that nuns can have really good personalities, in case you didn’t know that already, and good senses of humor, too.
I gots me two kitties. One’s a blabbermouth, punctuating his daily activities with a running commentary, from howl to chirp to mmmm and mumble and back again. The other’s a cat of few words, unless you happen to say, “Bing, wannaeat?” in just the right cadence. Should he say anything else at any other time, I know he really means business. Derrick, on the other hand, is extremely sensitive to certain things he hears on TV, avoiding the immediate area or even slinking away when, say, Judge Judy calls someone as dumb as a bucket of rocks.
Me, I’m like Bing. Growing up in a “children should be seen and not heard” sort of environment, I didn’t say much at home, preferring to express myself through manic dancing (musical accompaniment optional) and short stories about a family of mallard ducks that had to stockpile food for the winter (must have been the “Little House on the Prairie” effect). I did often go outside and lie in the grass and talk to the clouds and Queen Anne’s lace, but try telling a person what you’d say to a woodpile—it doesn’t really translate.
Anyway, after years of becoming pretty good at capturing the gymnastics of my thoughts via the written word, I still find verbal communications, particularly in a professional environment, a bit of a challenge. I was reminded of this again at the yoga, astrology and chakras workshop I went to a couple weeks ago. The instructors said, based on my natal chart, that I should talk more because I am too reserved. Harumph! But what I write is simply so much more accurate… why talk in black-and-white when you can write in zebra stripes?
Because, well, we don’t walk around with a set of flashcards or a pad and paper and jot stuff down and pass notes to each other. We verbalize. We bullshit. We speak. We talk, and someone else talks back. It makes perfect sense! It’s not like you get a wordcount for the day, and you automatically run out if you go over the limit.
On the flipside…why couldn’t we get a little less conversation from the narcissistic cellphone talkers, or the parents who yell obscenities at their kids on the street, or the lady who stands in the middle of the subway car and says over and over we need to repent NOW (hey, Jesus is just alright with me, but don’t shove your little girl so hard when you move to the next car) or we’re goin’ to hell..
Ooof. Writing about talking is almost as bad as talking about writing. Or talking about talking. Can we please just listen to some music now?
