September 11th - Scattered Thoughts

Two nights ago one of my cats got hold of the earphones that go to my iPhone and dropped them in her water dish, where they stayed all night.  She has a penchant for anything rubber - certain kinds of shoe soles, hair clips, earrings, and drags them around the house.  I wake up on a regular basis to the sound of her biting something I've left on the nightstand.  She spent the first week that she lived with us hiding in a closet, chewing on a pair of my shoes.

I left the earphones to dry in a cabinet; they seem to be working.

I had elaborate plans this weekend to prepare for this body age challenge I signed up for at work; it involves being on a team and working out a lot, and I feel like I need to buy more workout clothes and healthy snacks to prepare for it.  Instead I spent the afternoon at the Renegade Craft Fair, where I spent a lot of money on handmade clothes and art.  I don't regret it, I just didn't get anything done to prepare for this exercise thing.  According to the body age measurements, my body is two years older than I am; I'd like to reverse that.

On the way home from the craft fair we got stuck in traffic; there was a parade in progress that we didn't know about that jammed up the whole neighborhood.  I got out of the car a mile or so from home and walked the rest of the way so M wouldn't be late for work.  By the time I got home I was tired and sweaty - the weather had changed from rainy and 60 to sunny and 80.  I changed back into my pajamas and fell asleep on the couch.

I keep thinking maybe I should go back to school, but I was never a very good student.  Maybe I'd be better now, I don't know.

I spent a lot of time on facebook tonight, talking to people on instant message - when it would let me.  That thing always freezes up.

Someone keeps trying to call us collect from prison; we've gotten three messages of a recorded voice asking if we'll accept charges:  "this call is subject to recording and monitoring, to accept charges press 1, to refuse charges press 2, to prevent calls from this facility press 6, for a rate quote press 7."

We really need to go grocery shopping; for dinner I ate leftover quinoa that I made last weekend, and a freezer burnt bag of risotto from Trader Joe's.

I'm wearing one of the handmade things that I bought today, a brown t-shirt with snowdrop flowers silk-screened onto it.  The TV has been on for no good reason, tuned to MeTV, a Chicago broadcast channel that airs old shows.  Right now they're showing an episode of Gimme a Break! where Nell goes to a funeral, and I'm pretty sure the pastor is being played by one of the guys from What's Happening!! - the one who always wore a beret.

We finally got an estimate to fix the room in the basement that we'd been using as a bedroom; it got damaged about two years ago when we had record rain, and then again about a month ago when we had more record rain.  In between the two rainfalls the market crashed, I lost my job, and got a new one.  We've been living like transients the whole time - our stuff has been shoved onto the back porch, into bins and piles in the basement, and we've been sleeping in the room off the kitchen on a mattress and box spring.  Our clothes are bursting from the ineffective Ikea wardrobe units that we bought as a temporary measure.  The cats seem to enjoy them at least, I often find one or more of them asleep in my clothes.  The estimate for repairing the basement room seemed fair; I'll be so excited when we go ahead and get it fixed.  Maybe then I'll start feeling some forward movement in our home life - we are way too old to be living like this.

As I type this, my cat - the same one who drowned my earphones, is sitting between the keyboard and the monitor, following the cursor as it makes its way across the screen.  This is her favorite spot to sit when I'm at the computer; it's not very helpful, but at least she's not trying to eat something that's not food.