Small World

A few days ago my mom was volunteering at a riding stable for children with disabilities, something she's done for years. She was cleaning out one horse's stall with another volunteer, who was telling everyone a story about a campground she and her husband visit.

This campground was home to many stray cats. The woman and her husband fed the cats all summer, but during the winter the cats had to fend for themselves. The owner of the campground wasn't as fond of the cats, and one day told the woman that he was going to start getting rid of them.

"What do you mean, getting rid of them?" she asked.

"I'm gonna start shooting them," he replied, "And I'm going to start with that crippled one the next time I see him."

There was one crippled cat there who was a favorite of the woman and her family. He was a friendly orange tabby, and the family was dismayed when they came back one spring to find that he'd broken his leg over the winter and it had healed up improperly. He always hung around with a white cat, and he was so personable that the woman's children would hold out spoons of cat food that he'd happily eat out of.

The woman hated the idea of such a friendly cat getting shot, so she tried to catch him. He was tough to nab, but eventually she caught him and his friend and turned them in to the shelter.

At this point something clicked in my mom's brain. "Was it a front paw that was broken?" she asked.

"Yeah," the woman said.

"And was it curled up like this?" my mom asked, folding her hand like a hook.

"Yeah," the woman said, surprised.

"And did you turn him in to the shelter where they named him Rusty?" my mom asked, grinning.

"Yeah!" the woman said. "How did you know?"

Yep, it turns out that poor stray was my Rusty. It turns out the woman was active in the shelter, so she remembered Cider too. She was happy to hear how the two were doing.

I had no idea that Rusty been a stray for years before he was picked up, and I certainly had no idea that he'd been close to being shot. It makes me slightly nauseous to imagine him dying in that campground. Knowing more of his story makes me feel even luckier that he got picked up when he did.

Fruits of our labor? Flowers of our labor!

Today my mom, sister and I made the majority of the flowers for my wedding, including all of the bridal party bouquets, the corsages, and the boutonnieres. I'm using silk flowers instead of real, so we were able to make everything in advance (and for cheap!). I wanted gladiolus since it was a favorite flower of both of my grandmothers.

Here's a boutonniere, held up by yours truly to give an idea of scale.



And here's my sister holding a bouquet. I thought about pixellating her face like on COPS, but decided to crop instead.



Not bad for a morning's work. I really enjoyed doing it. Maybe I should develop a flower-arranging hobby!

Tyger

This is kind of unusual, but beautiful too.

Go shove your squiggles up your ASS, Cosmo

This weekend I was reading Cosmo.

Now, let me just stop and point out that yes, two solid days of playing Pokemon, reading Cosmo, and watching daytime TV probably pegs just exactly how culturally ignorant I am. Rest assured that I'll be listening to some kind of obscure indie rock or visiting an art museum or tuning in to NPR later to make up for it.

One of the little articles in Cosmo was about the new fashion trend, the skinny jeans. Here's an actual text excerpt of the article:

Trendy slim-cut pants suit just about everyone, but there are a few things to keep in mind when wearing them: If you're curvy, go for a more forgiving (yet just as foxy) straight-cut style. If your frame is squiggle-free, shimmy into a tighter, supertapered type.

Let's forget for the moment that "supertapered" isn't a word.

Oh fuck it, I just can't. "Supertapered" isn't a word, dumbasses. Even I know that, and I spent a significant portion of yesterday trying to catch a rattata so I could win my Pokemon battle!

Let's look at the two bits of that excerpt that make me angry.

First of all, they say that curvy girls need a more "forgiving" type of jeans. The next step in that train of logic would be that curves need to be forgiven, that they're undesirable or bad somehow. And by looking at those jeans, I'd say a curve would be any distribution of body mass that could be defined as something other than "skeletal."

The second and more irritating bit is that they refer to skinny girls as being "squiggle-free." Now ask me how I could possibly feel good about my body when every lump and bump is referred to as a "squiggle." If I thought that "curvy" implied fat, what the hell do you think my psyche does with "squiggle?" Goshdamn.

When I showed the article to Mike he just shrugged and continued to chew on his saltine. When I got indignant and asked, "Well, doesn't any part of that seem offensive?" he replied, "Well, I can see how they're using 'curvy' in a derogatory manner, but I think that curvy is attractive, and if they don't like it they're lame."

Indeed.

But Mike's not PMSing like I am, so I'm entitled to a little more rage.

So shove your squiggle-talk up your ass, Cosmo. I hope that next fall the style is super-baggy jeans, ones that you need actual hips to keep from falling down.

Springer

I haven't watched daytime television in a long time, but I used to do it quite a bit. During the summer my brother, sister and I would watch Rikki Lake, Maury, and Jenny Jones all the time. My mom must have thought we were horrible, sitting inside on a perfectly good day just watching that drivel, but we lapped it up. We didn't have cable on account of the content of a lot of cable shows, so this was the next best thing.

Today I watched Jerry Springer and Maury. I actually want to watch Maury again tomorrow just because they're having DNA testing results, and I want to watch Springer again too. I have a much deeper fascination with Springer, though. Springer seems to highlight the absolute worst situations that people find themselves in, and most of the time the guests are shocked to find out the news.

The shock is what gets me. I mean, on other daytime shows, they have makeover episodes or things like that. Pleasurable surprises. Not Springer. On Springer, even though each episode has a different title and theme, only one things happens over and over. You find out some horrible secret about your significant other, mostly that they've been cheating. If you watch this show even just a little, you know that it's true. Who the hell could possibly get that invite to be on Springer and think, "Oh yes, this will end well for me and my girlfriend."

Because everyone seems eager to be on the show despite the obvious drawbacks there must be something about it that I'm not seeing. This makes me want to be a guest on Springer to see what the allure is. I looked online to see how I could be a guest, and discovered that you must:

Have an interesting one-night stand story

Be a wild, sexy woman interested in being on Springer Pay-Per-View

Be a prostitute with an interesting story to tell

Belong to a racially-motivated group

Be torn between two lovers

Be a polygamist

Be a swinger

Be cheating and feel like you want to confess

Unfortunately, I'm not any of those things right now, and I doubt that Mike would want me to take another fiance or join the KKK just to be on television. So I'm going to settle for being a guest on Springer. Sometime before the summer is out, I want to go down to Chicago for a taping of Springer! I will also wear my most conservative clothing and perhaps a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, and use the phrases "Oh my," and "Gracious!" throughout the taping, just for extra fun.

Daytime television is so much fun.

Ooh, pictures!

I've finally cleaned our apartment enough that I'm not completely embarrassed to show pictures of it. So here we go!

First, a photo of our lovely rummage sale.



The heads got sold, thankfully. They were freaking me out.

Now, our living room.



Yeah, Mike likes books. If you think it's cluttered now, you didn't see it two weeks ago.

This is another view of our living room, including the table I've set my laptop on.



And the kitchen, as if you were standing in the door to the living room.



Here's another view of the kitchen. The tenant before us pretty much trashed the apartment, and one thing he did was paint bizarre pictures and poetry all over the walls and ceilings. Here you can see some of his handiwork on our cupboard, which we haven't been able to cover up yet.



It'll be nice when it's all cleaned.

Hope you had fun!

Meez

You, too can waste your Sunday morning by making a Meez.



I think it would look just like me, if only I could make it more curvy (aka, chubby).