Nyotaimori

“Although cats, when young, are playful and gay, they possess at the same time an innate malice and perverse disposition, which increases as they grow up, and which education teaches them to conceal but never to subdue. Constantly bent upon theft and rapine, though in a domestic state, they conceal all their designs; seize every opportunity of doing mischief, and then fly from punishment.

“They easily take on the habits of society, but never its manners, for they have only the appearance of friendship and attachment. This disingenuity of character is betrayed by the obliquity of their movements and the ambiguity of their looks. In a word, the cat is totally destitute of friendship; he thinks and acts for himself alone…Their sleep is light; and they often assume the appearance of sleeping when in reality they are meditating mischief.”

this quote was in the SF Chronicle submitted by a P. Partridge from an old Encyclopedia Britannica. and this is so true. so true.

my house has a lot of cats (6) and we also now have a fancy box for them to sleep on top of.

how fancy is that?! it’s got wainscoting. no, seriously. and guess who used the sweat of her brow to build it? oh, it was me. i got a blister! stupid screwdriver.

proof that at least one cat (the fish) likes to sleep on it. not as much as he likes to sleep on me, but i find him there on occasion.

but what’s this? it opens and holds a litter box? shocking!

so fancy, so accessible with the hole in the side, so cleverly designed to keep litter inside with the two holes to go through. also a hook! a hook to hold the scooper. it’s gold-plated. are you impressed yet?

is my life so narrow that this designer cat litter box can actually delight me so much? yes. yes, it is. it’s just so NICE. even if my kitten is a rapacious, friendless, wrecker of havoc; this box makes me happy.

as soon as classes ended last may and my high school job ended in june i started reading. i’ve had a backlog of books since the san francisco public library book sale TWO YEARS AGO. i set myself a goal of eliminating as many books as possible before THIS year’s sale. i was not really very successful. partially because i’ve continued buying new books on a regular basis. and also because kim’s mom gave me 2 huge boxes of YA advance copies. so now (well, 2 weeks ago), i took pictures of the books i’d read this summer, the books i still had to read, and the new books from kim’s mom.

first my “to-be-read shelf”.

“that’s more like 2 shelves, michele,” you might be thinking. well, BAM!

it’s really more like 4 shelves. sadly.

then there’s the piles of advance copies i just got:

the above are the ones i kept. i’ve already read or given up on over half of them.

ones i dumped from the get-go. and by “dumped” i mean i drove them over to the juvenile hall and donated them. alison, the librarian, emailed me later to say she was squealing over lots of them since the kids have been requesting them but they’re not in paperback yet (JHs can’t have hard-backs because you could injure someone with one).

and finally, some of the ones i actually read this summer (and have kept). yey! completed books! i’ve also sold off a lot of them already so this isn’t everything. but, you know, a good representative sample.

plus i’ve read some more in the 2 weeks since i took these pictures. maybe 8 or 9 more? and because i am a dolt, i’ve also bought more. maybe 7 more. this is a horrible vicious cycle. kristen and i have a made-up language for books. when they’re new they’re “shiny” because they still have that attractive luster which made you buy them. brand-new, glistening with promise. but then when they sit on your to-be-read shelf(ves) for too long they get “stale”. their appeal fades and the loss of glamor is unappetizing. old, boring.

oh well, ever more books. what can you do? backlog is a necessary evil, i guess.

kittens.

also a necessary evil.

ha ha ha ha!!!

oh yeah, a new barbie movie comes out on tuesday. top of the netflix list, baby. anyone want to mock me/watch it?

you know you wanna. don’t deny.

you know what nuala did for me last night? took my picture with a gigantic cardboard cut-out of the cast from high school musical 3. now that’s friendship. happy birthday, ducky!

(ha ha, i’m a terrible friend for uploading this picture.)

the last 20 hours has seen me wearing an apron and rolling out pastry dough in an effort to make chocolate croissants. finally, FINALLY, they’re cooked and i got to try one. disgusting! like seriously gross. godDAMMIT!

WHY did the recipe call for bittersweet chocolate when so obviously it should have been milk. or at least semi-sweet? why didn’t i follow my instinct and ignore the recipe? grump grump grump. now i have a dozen nasty croissants and a wasted 20 hours*.

*clarification: at least nine of those hours were spent sleeping. and that is not one of my croissants.