Self Image & Playing Dress-Up

I have always been a big one for the fun of playing dress-up, creating an alternative persona and donning appropriate attire for the role, even if that persona is merely an emphasis of a single aspect of myself. Nowadays this is usually the feeling I have when I take the time to put on makeup, the emphasis of my features making me a slightly exaggerated, hopefully better looking, version of myself: New Improved Rosie PLUS! With decreased blotchiness and 50% more eyelashes than ever before!

Before I discovered the joys of cosmetics most of my self transformations were achieved through clever manipulation of old net curtains. Our dressing up box contained a few discarded 1960s outfits of my mother's, ranging from smart dressy blouses to hippyish kaftans, one extremely ugly baby blue nylon negligee, and dozens of yards of heavy-weight chiffon which had adorned the windows of our house when my parents moved in.

Net curtain is a surprisingly versatile costuming medium, especially combined with a child's imagination. There was a lot of "I'm a roman senator!" of course, and some "I'm Cleopatra... Dressed like a roman senator!" I'm pretty sure the Greek and Roman pantheons factored in somewhere, along with the White Witch of Narnia, Glenda the Good Witch of Oz...And probably a great deal of randomly draping myself in white and declaring that the curtains represented Elizabeth I's famous gold gown, or Victoria's plain black mourning dress. They didn't have to accurately resemble anything, the point was to cover day to day garb and become something, someone different.

You'd think with such a preponderance of white frilly dress-up stuff surrounding me at an early age that I would have played the ultimate girlish fantasy role of "bride" many times in my early years, perfecting my mental image of myself as a virginal princess awaiting my shining knight. But I didn't.

Princess never factored in strongly as a fantasy role for me either, since in most fairy tales one achieves princess status by marrying a prince. I liked Cinderella more before she got the prince: she put up with a lot of crap and was still nice to the local wildlife, afterwards she was just "the princes bride". The Little Mermaid was absolutely stark staring crazy for giving up being a mermaid, just to be a mute wife to a stuck up ponce of a prince, not to mention the whole walking-on-knives thing she had to live with in the version I read. I mean come on! Mermaid... Swimming about like a dolphin, being one of the sexiest mythical creatures ever conceived, sitting on a rock combing your hair all day...Since when is being a half-crippled land bound princess better than that?

My sister planned a pretend wedding for me, marrying me off to the boy down the street when I was only three years old. I wore a many-layered net curtain skirt pulled up to my armpits in place of a dress, blue canvas mary-jane shoes with paper flowers glued on specially for the occasion, and a mantilla style veil of (you guessed it) net curtain. That was fun because it was an excuse to play, it was a party, plus it meant a great deal of attention for me and the little groom, nothing to do with the wedding part.

When I fantasized fairytale roles for myself I was a nymph of the woodland or river variety, I was Botticelli's Venus rising from the waves, I was Titania, a mermaid or selkie, a mortal child thrust into a magic world like Dorothy in Oz or Lucy in Narnia, sometimes Nancy Drew or a female version of Sherlock Holmes. What I'm getting at here is the absence of damsel in distress roles. I hated being cast as the girl tied to the railroad tracks when I played with the boys in my neighborhood.

Of course I had insecurities that I ignored with play, but I played at being a strong adventurous female to quell my fears, rather than dreaming of rescue from my emptiness by something tall dark and handsome. I was lonely, so I made up varied characters to fill that space, not some hunky husband.

Perhaps that is why the bridal boutiques I have visited have had such a surreal dressing up box feeling to me. All that white lace and netting reminds me more of flouncing around the upstairs bathroom declaring myself the child incarnation of several of the ancient gods (all rolled into one of course), of the dusty mothball smell of some old lady's misplaced attempt to prettify the windows of a Victorian house. It all seems like a hold-over from more than a century ago, when tight fitting bodices and full skirts were daily wear, the wedding dress was just a more special variation on the regular style.

I have been trying to take the attitude that this is an excuse to buy an unusually expensive outfit and dress much more ornately than usual, then I get caught up in the cultural expectations of ornately beaded bodices, chapel trains and schiffli lace and and I start to get the feeling that somehow my search for The Dress should be some sort of spiritual journey.

Everything I tried on until last Friday felt like a costume, even the one dress that was close to being a contender was more Scarlett O'Hara than it was Rosemary Grace...These confections did not elicit the mythical moment of wonder and high emotion supposedly brought on by donning a heavily structured gown of ivory satin and shimmering sequins: the moment when you first "feel like a bride". Maybe I don't know what this Bride Feeling [TM] is supposed to be. It's hard to get religious about an item of clothing that has been elevated to iconic status by the fashion industry as an excuse to squeeze at least a grand and a half out of every woman who wishes to make her wedding a big celebration.

Then I finally achieved the moment when you know you're wearing The Dress, and it was a simple as looking in the mirror and realizing that the size ten sample I had half-squeezed myself into looked like something I would wear in real life, that what stood out was me and not the dress. After all, that's what I wanted: to be pretty, and to be myself. Rosie Plus! Shiny Hair! Not-Shiny Forehead! 50% more eyelashes! Best foot forward for a day that celebrates how lucky I am to have found my life partner, how lucky we are to be together and happy.

I don't recommend having a massive dose of progesterone injected into your hip as a mood-lifter. I nearly burst into tears and hid under the bed this morning because I put too much milk in the bowls for our instant oatmeal and it was runny. The agony of runny oatmeal! Of course it wasn't the state of the oatmeal that upset me, it was the inference that I was incapable of a task as simple as making said oatmeal. The unfortunate side effect of hormonal birth control is that it gives me a week of feeling utterly stupid, and highly defensive about that stupidity.

Defensiveness seems to run in my family, I noticed this Christmas that my parents and sister and I are frequently to be heard saying "what, do you think I'm stupid?" or some other similar hackled response. Having noticed it I'm starting to head those thought trains off at the pass. Before they reach my mouth. It leads to lots of uneccesary aggro, we're such a drama free unit, it would be nice to be even more drama free.

Right now I need to get back to updating my notebook. I have to get myself organized before Dianne goes to Ethiopia for two weeks, leaving me in charge of the lab, and the high school student who arrives next week. I'm still getting used to being in a teacherly position, though luckily this time I won't be simultaneously teaching a high school student and a recent graduate, that makes it more tricky because they're at very different levels of understanding to start with.

So much to mention, very few things of vast importance, but then that's how my life has been going recently. There's very little big huge news, low drama levels, so I feel that anything I think of to write about here is terribly trivial and not essential to be mentioned...and end up writing nothing. While I still go to read the trivial details of other people on their blogs, so clearly trivia is what makes things interesting, details and minutiae. Hell, I even wrote a poem once about how life (and love) are made up of the seemingly trivial details.

Perhaps what I need to do is to pick my favorite detail and write about that, rather than listing off everything and watching it flatten like toothpaste as it's translated into text.

Marble has developed a false idol. Instead of dutifully worshipping us two humans as the givers of catnip toys, crunchy nutritionally balanced food, the occasional treat of a scrap of cheese, and a warm place to sleep, she spends her days gazing lovingly at one arm of the futon sofa. The arm that contains her One True Love: the feather wand. If I sit at that end of the sofa she will start pacing back and forth, stretching up to paw at the hinges, sitting up on her haunches like a meerkat so she can stare at me and make a little squeak that I can only assume is supposed to be a meow. I can be there for an hour or more, watching a movie, and every time I look at her she's still wide-eyed with anticipation and lets out a little peep to tell me to get a move on and give her some fun. She must have a built in sensor that can tell if the arm has been opened while she's of of sight, because if I open it to retrieve a remote control, or a lighter, Marble materializes right next to me, pulling herself up onto the seat of the sofa, ready to chomp on some feather and plastic. She's a crack addict with fuzzy paws and a round belly.

Which brings me conveniently to her newly acquired pot belly. That cat has gotten decidedly rotund since we adopted her. I'd worry, but she can still leap 3 feet in the air, flipping over sideways as she flies in pursuit of the elusive feather wand. When she's stretched out full length her tummy is clearly globular, accented by dainty little paws. When Talli stretches out he's just all leg and spine and a whole lot of hair. He is legs-and-fur, she is belly-and-fur. She can still out-leap him though, bouncing from floor to couch to chair and back again like a miniature hornless mountain goat, even without a feather to chase.

I just checked the sunrise/sunset times for Edinburgh, and tomorrow they get a whopping 6 hours and 58 minutes of daylight (8.42am-3.40pm), by midwinter it will be 5 minutes less than that. It's cloudy too, so it won't really feel like daylight until at least 9.30, and by 2.30 the sun will be so low in the sky it will already feel well into twilight. I remember days where it felt as though the sun had never risen, going to school in the dark, coming home in the dark.

My mental image of November in Edinburgh is walking down the Cowgate (a street in the Old Town) in the dark at 4 in the afternoon, hunched against the rain blowing around me and trying not to slip on the wet flagstones, or step on one that will tilt and cause a puddle underneath it to jet cold water up my ankles. Christmas shopping is always in the dark, the light provided by the advent calendar style panels lining Princes Street, the huge city Christmas tree, the shopfronts full of cashmere sweaters and sparkling things of various descriptions.

I don't know why, but I still miss my home town at this time of year, even though when asked what I remember most is being cold and wet, longing for a sunny day without the necessity for a thermal undershirt under my school uniform. In the winter, warmth came from the atmosphere of the city: the pre-Christmas bustle, the preparations for the huge street party on New Year's Eve, the ubiquitous bagpipers on the street corner, only with the addition of a Santa hat and a few variations of carols in their repertoire to keep them up to date with the season. The cold air felt good on my face with the rest of me bundled up, I walked fast to keep warm, winter forced a spring into my step.

Now I come to think of it, it's the walking I miss, winter or summer. It's easier to feel energetic when every day contains at least 20-30 minutes of brisk walking to get where you're going, especially when that walk isn't following 30-45 minutes sitting in traffic in your car. Sometimes I think fondly of lazing around the garden on a warm summer's day, but most often when I think of Edinburgh it's walking: up hill and down alley, from Old Town to New, beside vendors stalls and street performers in festival time, weaving in and out of laden shoppers in December. This time last year that's exactly what I was doing. Walking around Edinburgh, frequently arbitrarily. I even planned my schedule so that I would zig-zag across the centre of town horrendously inefficiently, just so I could walk across Waverly Bridge and North Bridge, go up Cockburn Street then down The Mound, circling around by a long route for the hell of it because all I had to do was wander about town all day and buy souvenirs for my friends.

I probably won't be there again until close to this time next year, I think that will be a record length of absence for me, though the prospect of it doesn't scare me the way it did a couple of years ago. I miss the city and the people there, I get to see my parents here, but I don't get to see my friends or the cats. The difference is that now I'm much more established here, San Diego feels a lot more like home, my home feels a lot more like home because I have Matt sharing it with me, and cats of our own to hog the bed and sprinkle cat litter on the bathroom rug. I have a job I enjoy, a couple of hole in the wall places where I love to go eat, I have favorite places to go...I'm starting to feel I have a place in the general scheme of things.

It's still a pity I can't walk between most place, it takes more work to be active here.

The Dreaded Lurgie has caught me. Or, rather, I've caught it. The cold/flu that's been going around my work, and has already hit Matt, had until now passed me by. Until Last night that is. My throat started feeling oddly scratchy, and Matt's foot jiggling on the bed made me feel positively dizzy, even for a few minutes after he stopped jiggling.

This morning I woke up with a rasping gurgly windpipe, achey all over, but strangely not feverish, I've still got most of my mental capacity. I'm waiting for that to depart also. A few minutes ago I laughed at a joke made by a coworker, and the laugh turned into a raspy wheeze, I sounded like a dirty old man who's been smoking cigars for 40 years. Oh boy am I glad I'm not still a smoker, I'm certain I'd be a whole lot more sick already if I were.

Right now I'm feeling the urge to go home early and curl up with the cats, who will hopefully have figured out how to bring me soup without getting their mucky little paws in it.

RE: Handfasting

I have a lovely two-page list of things to consider for the ceremony, everything from mechanics of the ritual (who stands where, how we're going to cast the circle, the order in which to have the exchange of rings and binding of hands) right down to the color of the altar cloth, what goes on the altar (and where) and if we're wearing shoes or not. John also sent us three sample ceremonies, which is exactly what I needed, a bunch of random specifics to ponder, and a few examples of how other people have done it.

The nice thing was that none of his questions completely threw me, I knew what he was referring to and why it was important, and we already had answers for quite a few of them. Oddly enough we both know exactly what we're wearing, and have had many ideas for the material aspects of the ceremony, but not so many ideas on the substance of the wording. John made a very good point: we have complete control of what the ceremony says, which means we control the symbolism, and the form of bond it describes. We can skip the parts indicating that two people become joined into one big squishy entity in favor of emphasis on partnership and retained individuality. We will make the point that neither of us is being "given away" by anyone, but that we enter the circle already joined, as equals, and leave the circle having strengthened the bond.

One of the ceremonies I read over also gave me ideas for the wedding ceremony, which will be toned down on the pagan aspects, but still be very personalized. I'll get to that bit in a moment.

So far we have some basic points established. The handfasting cord will be white ribbon, embroidered by yours truly in a design we have yet to figure out. John will be the only one inside the circle with us, the audience will either be inside a larger, loose-cast circle, or none at all. There will be a broom-jumping at the end (too fun not to include it, and it's a Scottish tradition besides). We've got to decide on candles and colors for the altar, and find a chalice. There' is a lot to think about and do, but now we know what we're supposed to be deciding on, rather than "we've got lots to think about...but we don't know where to start".

The most important thing is that I bought a pair of silk slippers to wear, they greatly resemble shoes I've seen from the 16th and 17th century, only more foot-shaped. Gold silk with green and pink floral embroidery. I never thought I'd squee over something that fits that description.

RE: Wedding

As mentioned above, in one of the handfasting ceremonies I read I found something I definitely want to include in the ceremony involving the families (and less Pagan Claptrap [TM]).

It's an alternative to the traditional "giving away". Rather than walking me up the aisle and consenting to hand me over to Matt as one would a sack of potatoes (albeit a sack of potatoes in a dazzling white gown), this involves my father, and Matt's mother, representing the respective families. Giving blessing to our marriage and welcoming their child's partner into their own family. So my Dad gets to walk down the aisle with me, Marilyn gets to walk down the aisle with Matt, and instead of a handover of bride-as-property, we have a mutual welcome-to-the-family.

It sounds like my Dad's side of the family are up for the trek from Europe to California to be present, I love the idea of having a big party with my US and European family all present, I'd like to see a conversation between Aunt Pat and Aunt Julia, my two most outspoken aunties, the idea amuses me. Two women who have both influenced my development, and yet have never met. I hope Matt's family also surprises him by making more effort than he suspects they're willing to and all showing up.

RE: Stuff

Clearly, things are falling into place rather well, both ceremonies are beginning to take a more solid form. I'm getting a nice picture of both, and the differences between the two. I'm more sure that, for us, this is the right way around to do it, the slight separation of an "us" ceremony and a "them" ceremony.

And Now, We Get To Practice Normality

Whatever that is.

Even though we've lived together for six months, (and been in our new place a whole month) I don't think Matt and I have developed a true routine of living together. The only real routine seems to have been one of transition. Moving the furniture around, re-organizing, getting stuff in the orientation we want and completely failing to ever truly tidy up, him going to Japan, getting back, getting laid off...getting 60 days notice to quit...no point settling in further, getting cats, selling off extra furniture, re-organizing, moving (the move that never seemed to end), Matt starting new work, rearranging furniture, re-organizing, buying shelves, re-organizing, taking excess furniture up to LA, re-organizing.

It needs to stop.

We need to relax. Before we forget who we both are in the continued re-organizing and "improving", before we wear ourselves out further by unnecessary efforts to be superhuman streamlined and efficient beings.

Since mid-September we've both been afraid of losing forward momentum. If I stopped moving I might have been hit by the full force of how screwed we'd be if Matt didn't find new work, of how unfair it was that we had to leave our first home together after only 5 months, if I stopped moving I might not have been able to keep up being supportive, I might have turned into a selfish gibbering heap begging Matt for reasurrance that he wouldn't end up chronically unemployed, depressed and angry at the world.

If he stopped moving he might have stopped filling out online applications, going to job fairs, tweaking and polishing his resume, if he stopped moving he might have had the full force of the feeling of rejection hit him in the face, he might have started to wonder more and more at his own worth and abilities. If either of us stopped moving we might not have made it through the rough patch. It's the rule with rough terrain: don't stop moving, if you stop moving you lose traction and start to slide, to skid and get stuck in the mud.

The determined maintenence of momentum was good. It got us through, but now we're back on a smoother path momentum is not nearly so desperate an issue. We can hit cruise control, even take a little break and wander about looking at the scenery. Enjoy our new home and the deranged animals we share it with. Enjoy each other again, rather than "being supportive" through a difficult time.

Oddly enough the first thing I'm going to do to achieve improved relaxation is join a gym. Extraordinarily I've come to view exercise as rather a treat, since it serves no purpose other than to make me feel good. It's ultimately purely for me that I would climb on to a rowing machine, because I'm the one who benefits from the good quality sleep that follows exercise, and the increased energy levels that come from sticking with it. I surprise myself, it's not too long ago that it was a chore, something I was supposed to do if I wanted to be a virtuous bunny, karate helped fix that, then my work schedule made karate feel like a chore again.

My Christmas vacation time is on its way, hopefully before that I won't feel quite so in need of a holiday, then I'll be able to enjoy it more.

This time I shall attempt to post more than a sparse paragraph about the sleep deprivation torture the cats are trying to inflict upon us. Which is still periodically in effect, Talli brought me his toy carrot at some point last night, and then meowed from the bedroom windowsill to announce the arrival of dawn. It was a pretty spectacular view, so I don't blame him for wanting to share, a very bright scarlet morning sky to my sleepy eyes. I'm almost sorry our patio doesn't have an Eastern view too, every once in a while it's nice to watch the dawn.

*warning* Christmas Shopping Linkfest Approaching.

I spent $100 on my face last month. In true Californian me-me-me fashion I started my Christmas shopping by buying something for myself from Clinique [>]. It seems rather silly since I rarely wear makeup, but I got a different foundation, a fancy oil-control cream that is working wonders (no more daily oil slick on my forehead), and two gift sets: one containing a collection of eyeshadows, the other a set of makeup brushes with a travel case. I always love the little compact makeup palettes you can get, but I only really use eyeshadow, not blush or lip stuff, so they're not something I can justify getting, this one is practically custom-made for me, shades of brown: cream through golden brown ending in a coffee-ish almost black. And brushes! Soft brushes! In a bright red patent leather vanity case just big enough to hold a basic essentials kit of makeup. Hooray. It's shiny, and it makes me happy.

After breaking the seal on the Christmas spending thing, I proceeded to check off a few singificant people from the list on the day before Thanksgiving. Online shopping is a wonderful thing, I found onyx pillar holders for Mum at Illuminations [>] for 30% off the store price, and free shipping (yay for free shipping). A custom-made boutonniere that looks like a little sprig of flowers from Tradewind Tiaras [>] for Granny, and pewter candle cups (again from Illuminations) for Evie. Yesterday Matt and I went up to the Witch Creek Winery [>] in Julian and stocked up on port, and some wine. Dad's getting port again for Christmas, since it was a big hit last year. I hope nobody points out the slight illogic of presenting my Mother with chunky onyx Christmas presents when she's got to lug them home again, I did skip the decorative onyx fruit-bowl because of potential impracticality of transport.

The cats are still...cats. Marble is getting more noodlesome, spending most of the time scampering about the apartment looking like she just got a static shock on her rear. She seems a little less affectionate these days, more concerned with being off on her own little feline missions. But that could be due to her figuring out that the feather wand lives in the arm of the futon, she spends all her non-scampering time trying to figure out how to open the lid and get to her favourite toy. Well, when she's not sleeping curled up with her brother in the large cat bed I bought them, they've still got that bookend image to maintain after all. Gah! They're so cute and fuzzy, so silly and crafty at the same time, and so FUZZY...I can't keep from waffling about them. Be warned: I bet it's going to be even worse when I get around to having children.

Monday night's 2am routine was repeated again last night, without the sock this time. Evidently he just wanted some extra loving and an invite to sleep under the covers on MY side, maybe he thought Marble was getting special treatment or something. These cats are so adorable, in the superfuzzy way and the quirky noodle-brain way too.

They'd be a lot cuter if they let us sleep through the night on a regular basis.

2am Fun During Sock-Hunting Season
I was woken up last night by the sounds of one of our ravenous and deadly beasties running about with a rolled-up sock gripped between his teeth. I am assuming this was after thoroughly killing said sock, through the method of picking it up and shaking his head about vigorously. Always the best way to kill a sock.

I suspect this was an attention getting ploy, since his sister was asleep under the covers somewhere near Matt's legs, and he had nobody to play with. After 1/2 an hour of noisy purring and mewing and chewing on my hand he finally settled down and let us all sleep again. But not until after he'd succeeded in getting Marble ejected from her hiding place by jumping up and down on her head through the blankets.

Pretty much any sort of planning or ceremony writing for the Handfasting has been put off until after our move. We've now moved, so I suppose it's time to start on the ceremony, I want a basic framework to start from, other than the trad Christian wedding we all pretty much know by heart. Otherwise it's just too daunting. Time to call in John, the officiant, for a bit of prodding us into action.

* * *

Matt told his family we're engaged, it had been put off to allow a decent interval between his sister's wedding and our announcement. Some members of his family seemed to think it might be held in Pennsylvania, and were shocked to hear it's going to be in San Diego, which would involve travel for them, possibly even by plane. If anyone actually whines about it I'll point out they're lucky it's not going to be in Scotland, which would require not only travel by plane but getting a passport as well. The idea of getting married in a castle somewhere in Scotland is still very appealing to me, but it's so impractical to arrange, we'll just have to make sure we stay in a castle hotel sometime when we visit.

My Mum tried to convince me that it would actually make more sense to go for LA over San Diego, since then everyone could stay at Granny's...I shot that down pointing out that the planning part would be made considerably more complex by doing it in a city other than where I live. We're fortunate that nobody in either family is going to make a real issue out of the location, it seems it's just par for the course that everybody is going to think it would be a splendid idea for us to be married on their doorstep rather than our own. I think that's the first stereotypical "wedding planning conversation" I've had so far.

I was concerned that my determination to abandon the modern tradition of a white gown would lead to some tutting and head-shaking. Fortunately for me nobody in my family gives a rat's ass if I choose to wear blue or green, or even burgundy, over white, which relieves me. My Granny was married in a tweed suit at a little chapel in LA, and my Aunt in a plaid skirt in a Courthouse, nobody's going to care if I don't have a trad wedding (at least in the sense of the level of formality). Hooray.

OK, so Matt's family will be somewhat nonplussed at the absence of a big white dress, but they will also be nonplussed by him wearing a kilt, and by the various accents of my family. That's not even counting my European cousins, that's just my Mother (transatlantic), Father (English), and Sister (German-influenced brit). So I'm not really worried about confusing or disappointing them, because I already know it'll be pretty darn unlike their image of a wedding.

Today we're grabbing the FINAL scraps from our old place. Yes it took us this long, the difference between moving just up the stairs and moving to an entirely different apartment. Last time I opnly had to pick up everything once, this time I had to load my car, then unload it all and haul it up two flights of stairs.

It's been a long slog, but we love our new place, we just need to find ways to make ourselves fit more comfortably in here, we need to streamline our possesions, store them efficiently I mean, we've already done the throwing-out part of streamlining.

Status Report:
All available boxes have been filled, I should have been stockpiling them from work for the past month, we've got much more stuff than boxes to put it in. My car is full to the roof, except for one spot in the trunk, a little smaller than a shoe-box. Matt's car is not full to the roof, but he has an insane volume of cargo space, there's still a lot of boxes in there. Work is going smoothly so far, helped along by my considerate boss not dropping 5 hours of work in my lap on moving day (considerate employers make life much simpler).

Back to the cell culture hood for me, then it's box-hauling time!

The plan for the move is taking form. We can get the keys tomorrow any time after 2pm, I am also supposed to be picking up the U-Haul around 2pm tomorrow.

So. Tomorrow...I will bike to the med center, catch the shuttle to campus, work for a few hours, catch no later than the 12.30 shuttle back to hillcrest and then bike to the U-Haul place to collect my 14' monster. They double-booked the 10' truck, and originally tried to offer me the 17' as a replacement, fortunately I thought to ask if they had anything smaller. After picking up the truck, I will drop it at the old place, pick up my (already loaded) car and drive with Matt to hand over our rent check, get our keys and start filling the new place with our junk. I'll unload my car while Matt does a Boot Camp Inspection of the place and fills out the move-in inventory. He's really good at finding random little bits of damage to make sure we don't get screwed on our deposit.

Then it's back to load up the truck as much as possible, hopefully with everything, but failing that with essentials like the bed. The goal is to be able to move the cats Friday night, which means having the bed set up so they have something familiar to hide under when we lock them in the bedroom on Saturday so they don't get underfoot for the rest of the move.

Around 5 a friend is showing up to help with the loading/unloading of one lot of furniture in the truck. Saturday morning will be the second load of furniture, if needed, I have to return the truck within 24 hours, so we have until 1 or 2pm to make use of it.

I'm hoping very much we'll get the actual moving part done by the end of Saturday, so we can use Sunday to unpack, clean the old place, and recover.

The packing has begun, I took home every decent sized box that came into work yesterday containing shipments from various biotech supply companies. None of them biohazardous I hasten to add.

I'm having what seems to be the usual pre-move misconception that all of my belongings will be relatively simply and quickly stashed into conveniently categorized boxes, leaving no random detritus of odd-man-out items that doesn't fit (either physically or categorizationally) into the other boxes.

I know this is a misconception because it's happened every time I move. I start packing with the conviction that in no time I will have everything neatly and securely packed into appropriate boxes. With no leftovers. Then I keep stumbling across more and more stuff that must be packed and moved and it all has to get packaged up somehow. All of this ends up being unceremoniously crammed into whatever receptacle happens to be at hand, as long as that receptacle has handles.

There was the large IKEA bag that ended up containing the last-minute stuffing of: two silk cushions; a half-dead woolen sweater; a season of Sex And The City on VHS, still in it's plastic wrappings; a roll of ribbon; some pens and a couple of books. There is also the large cardboard box I still haven't unpacked entirely from moving in to this place. At one point it had candlestick holders, candles, a fire iron, tubes of decorative frosting...And a spurtle. A spurtle is a wooden spoon without the spoon part, it is used for stirring porridge. In other words: it's a stick. Only this stick has the shape of a thistle flower at one end, and a little tartan bow around it. Just in case you were in any doubt that it is an object of Scottish origin.

It is vitally important that I own a spurtle.

Important enough that it languished among the drying out tubes of frosting for four months before I thought to go find it and put it with the more frequently used kitchen tools.

Halloween has been survived, this year we had two parties to go to, in place of the big fat none of last year. We just had to stop back at home to re-apply our fake blood in between. We were Bonny & Clyde: vaguely 1920s clothes and bullet holes in our heads were all we needed.

It was unsettling seeing Matt with a pair of bloody bulletholes in his temples, he looked gory from all angles, I looked normal from one side, but when I turned the wound on my throat, and the one on my temple, became visible. It was kind of fun being the goriest pair of people present at one party. I think we got out-gored by the guy who came to the second party as one of the Reservoir Dogs, he was wearing a few more pints of fake blood than us.

Now it's time to start packing up our apartment, we're moving into the teeny weeny super cool place this weekend. Hopefully things will stay settled for a little longer after this move. I don't want to average 2-3 moves a year any more.

Thought For The Day (One of many...)

George W. Bush is a miserable failure [>]

We are paranoid parents. I didn't realize until we got the cats home how worried both of us had been that the visit to the vet would result in their complete trauma, and possibly news of some terminal illness causing the sneezing fits. Or that after one trip to the vet they'd never trust us again.

The only thing that seemed to bother them was being trapped in individual cardboard boxes, unable to see each other or what was going on around them. They're curious enough that they don't think to be particularly scared, they just want to check everything out. Including all the cupboards in the Vet's office. I solved the cardboard box problem by buying a carrier big enough for both of them (only just), so that on the way home they could be together and check out the world as well.

They got inspected, and had a giant worming pill each shoved down their throats, and were sent away with the verdict of a case of the sniffles that will clear up on it's own. We were given antibiotics to give them just in case, also to prevent secondary infections, we get to capture them twice a day and squirt orangey medicine down their throats with a needle-less syringe. Again, something that seems to traumatize them for all three seconds. I wish I had such powers of recovery.

Day five of cat-ownership. They've learned they don't need to wake me up to ask permission to jump onto the bed, so we all four sleep peacefully together. Maybe we need to upgrade to a king-sized, just so there's room for me, Matt and two cats.

We've figured out that Talli just pretends to be standoffish, all you need to do is pick him up and put him in someone's lap and he turns into an interactive teddy bear, complete with purr and the happy trample dance. We've also figured out that Marble is the bubble-head of the pair: she lives entirely in the moment, easily distracted by shiny things and her own tail. They both love milk (my morning cereal was eaten in a besieged state this morning), and butter, and one of them even decided they wanted to sample the Parmesan garlic bread I'd foolishly failed to put away immediately.

Other items of note are: Talli's developed a sniffle, he's been sneezing comic little squeak sneezes; Marble gave us a little present of a hairpellet the size of my little finger, and she may have *ahem* worms. So they're going to the vet tomorrow, I'm glad I've already signed up for a healthcare plan for them that covers vet visits, so I know exactly where to take them and don't have to pay just to be told what's wrong with them.

Parenting...It's a blast. I love having them around, the sniffles and hairballs are just minor hiccups. Pardon the pun.

Speaking of parenting, my parents will be in LA on Wednesday, then down here for the night on Friday. Before then I have to try to make more inroads into organizing our things for the move, with the side effect of the apartment looking tidier for their visit.

Later on Wednesday I got a call from a woman at the Friends Of County Animal Shelters (FOCAS) office, asking me when we were moving, and if I could give her the number for our current manager too, just to make sure it's all legitimate. Other than that we could collect the "little buggers" as soon as we were ready. She also said she'd knock the adoption fee down to $75 a cat so it was $150 total. Needless to say I was very excited, apart from having to sort out permission for them to be in our current apartment, that could have put the kibosh on the whole thing.

I couldn't give her the number right away, as it was saved in my cell phone, and we were speaking on my cell. This fortunately gave me time to call Matt, get him to ask Red if he'd say it was ok, even though the previous owner didn't allow pets and the current owner seems only concerned with getting all of the tenants out asap...Red said ok, so I called and gave FOCAS his info.

Much calling back and forth on Wednesday. I gave the FOCAS volunteer at Pet Smart the number for Red, then Deborah from the FOCAS office called me a while later only to realize the number was sitting on her desk already. THEN the afternoon volunteer at the Pet Smart called to ask if I'd given anyone the number for my current landlord. They may not share information too well, but they're certainly thorough about following up on adoption prospects.

By the time I left work I was hoping to be able to pick up our beasties on my way home, but I was also wondering if anyone had been able to get through to Red, and if so, had they told the people at the Pet Smart so that they'd give me the cats?

On the way there I got a call from Deborah, the woman in the main office, just to let me know everything was a-ok, she gave me her cell phone number in case the people at the store weren't sure if I'd been cleared or not.

Many forms to fill out, in duplicate (one for each cat), a great long string of coupons from Pet Smart to get started with kitty supplies, a 30 minute shopping spree involving much internal debate over brands of kitty litter, which food dish is cuter, and if they really need a climbing scratching post...and I was ready to claim my two meowing cardboard boxes. The cardboard boxes which contuinued to meow most pathetically all the way home. Especially when I turned a corner.

I called Matt when I was nearly home so he could hear the complaining for himself. With all the whining going on I fully expected both of them to bolt under the futon and stay there for a few hours as soon as we opened their boxes. As it turned out, both of them started for the shelter of the futon, but after a foot or so got distracted by checking out their new surroundings. Then they proceeded to wander about with their tails in the air examining everything. Especially Marble, she very soon was sidling on everything, which is a way of claming things as her own. Inside a couple of hours their body language changed from inquisitive and a little suspicious to inquisitive and feeling well at home. About 3 hours after we opened the boxes Talli had jumped up into Matt's lap and done the circular trample dance, complete with loud purr and face-nuzzling. It was like he was saying thanks for bringing us home, I like it here.

They're both enjoying having room to zoom about and chase each other in, and they both like coming into the bedroom at night to meow pathetically until invited onto the bed. They need to learn to just jump up without being asked, I don't want to have to wake up to give permission every time one of them feels like sleeping on me! Funny beasties.

Marble is still very kitteny, when I left for work this morning she was busy attacking the edge of the random spare square of carpet we have in our hallway, she wasn't having much luck in getting under the carpet, but she was giving it hell nontheless. I'd almost forgotten about cats' fascination with rugs and edges of almost anything.