Unhappy Cat

It's 1:15am and I just got done wrapping my cat in a towel and prying her mouth open so that ZPJ could squirt mushy food in her mouth with a syringe. Casey has lost a lot of weight in the last two months and something in her blood test was scary enough that the vet said we have to force feed her four times a day. She is literally starving to death and yet has no interest in food. What, oh what, could be wrong with my CaseyCat?

Are you asking yourself, "Didn't laurenj have a dangerously thin and sickly cat last year? Am I rereading an old blog post?" I'm asking myself the same thing. But this time it's the stripey cat, not the black cat. Why do my cats hate eating? It's like they're not even related to us!

I vote that having a sick pet sucks. I also vote that Casey should start eating by herself soon, because force feeding is not dignified or graceful for anyone involved. She is very sweet and cuddly when she's not feeling well, but all the same I'd prefer to have my old, bossy, browbeating percher back.

"Racist, yeah?"

I've been working with some middle schoolers this spring - the residency is centered on the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and other writers from the Harlem Renaissance. The kids are writing "porch lies" or folktales in Zora's style and last week they had to come up with 'a big question' that their folktale would answer. "You know," I told them, "like 'why is the grass green?' or 'why does the sun rise in the morning?'"

Some of the kids come up with your standard nature-based questions, but some were a little more interesting. "Why are there immigrants?" "Why do people from different place not get along?" "Why were black people slaves?" The last question came up in the 7th grade class and the teacher pulls me aside and says, "They can't do that question. You'll get in trouble because it's racist." I told her that I didn't come up with the question and didn't have any intention of writing their assignment for them and I certainly didn't think it was racist anyway. In fact, I found it to be a very promising topic for the assignment. "Well," she tells me, "I'm telling you for your own good. There are a lot of politics around this place and you're going to get in trouble for being racist." I told her that, as their teacher, it was completely her call to tell the kids what they could write about, but I was fine with it.

Politics, indeed. I wonder why half of the groups came up with a question about race relations? Maybe because they're not aloud to talk about it? Perhaps this is how folktales are born...

I'm A Ten

I've stopped reading, I've stopped listening to Talk of the Nation, I've even gotten behind on my This American Life.

NEW PODCAST CRACK:
Too Beautiful To Live out of 710AM KIRO Seattle

I will warn you, this three-hour nightly show is about NOTHING AT ALL but I absolutely can't stop listening to it. There are daily weigh-ins by the staff (not opinions, pounds), a weekly Gary Busey soundclip special, "TBTL is Mystery Solvers" segments, and Saved by the Bell tribute hours. They also have a wonderful facebook page. It is absolutely the best antidote to too many hours of election-related-punditry, because there is nothing relevant or meaningful on this show, other than wonderful soundclips from The Internets.

There are tens of listeners. I am one of them. You should be, too.

Casey's Big Adventure

We got home last night after being gone for over 12 hours and Casey was nowhere to be found. We were very worried for several reasons, among them being that she has been slightly sickly lately. Not really ill, just lethargic and grumpy. We searched the apartment everywhere for Her Stripyness and, not finding a clue of her, not a warm spot, not a ring of stripey fur, not an indented laundry pile, we began the search outdoors.

Who can know what Ms. Striperson's version of the story is, but it undoubtedly begins with an unexpected boon - several hours outside in the sunshine - but then the dream turns to a nightmare when the rain starts and it gets dark and after many hours no one opened the door to bring her food. She eventually scraped a hole under the fence and escaped into the neighbor's courtyard, but who knows how long she was there.

We were the saddest looking couple in Brooklyn last night, roaming around the streets of Park Slope, clicking our tongues and crying out "Casey! Casey!" and peering into courtyards and down alleys. I even snuck into someones alley and skulked through their courtyard in my search for my little old lady cat. We were absolutely distraught with the thought of here being chased into the park by squirrels or kidnapped by someone who thought that such a skinny, scrawny, complainy cat was OBVIOUSLY being abused or neglected and needed a good home. But she had a good home! With us!

We finally found her, not blocks and blocks away but in the courtyard right next to ours, ten feet from the hole that she'd climbed through. Not much of an adventurer, that cat. She was spooked, though, and wouldn't come when we called, so we had to get a neighbor to let us into the courtyard to rescue her. She was safely returned home and she just cuddled and purred and ate and seemed to completely forgive her daddy for locking her outside.

It goes without saying that our liberal backyard policy has been revised and restored to the more closely monitored policies of last year. Tough, but necessary.

Welcome back home, Casey, The Bossy Boss Striperson!

AIDS Walk 2008

Just returned from the Walk. Team Supersnack raised $55,479.00, which is pretty amazing (we are in the top ten out of thousands of teams), and ZPJ and I helped raise $2,000.00 of that. Special thanks to all our sponsors, including some readers:

• tarak
• Isaac
• IPJ
• linsdey
• Whitney and Elliott
• and MNS, who came to the Benefit on Friday

I hope I'm not missing someone who might actually read this blog...But seriously. We were overwhelmed by how supportive all our friends are. You rock!

Some pictures from the walk....

As promised, upon reaching 1G, I dyed my hair. I was going for pink but it turned orange because I didn't use a strong enough bleach.

This is us with The Snackster, who was our team mascot this year. He was fun and good natured (but also kind of a perv - he kept scratching his crotch and grabbing people's butts).

Here are some more Supersnackers - a highlight of the walk was finding another mascot to join our family:

The Snackster after a long day walking....

Thanks again to everyone. We really gave AIDS something to cry about today!

So, I haven't posted in awhile because I've been here:

Doing this:
And enjoying these:
Even when it was rainy:
Clouds make for good sunsets:
When the sun comes out, so do the nudie boats:

Very romantic:

Especially after a couple (dozen) coconut drinks:

Finally:

I am so incredibly sad to be back in NYC.

Kermumpfled

Along with the usual sleep-deprivation and self-doubt, my stress this week has been augmented by an unhealthy relationship that I am not pleased about. It's not an intimate relationship. It's not even, in the scheme of things, that important of a relationship. But it is unhealthy, and it is affecting my ability to have perspective about other things. I blogged about this EXACT situation regarding this EXACT person in November of 2006 - one of my very first posts to this now-legendary bastion of memoir and insight. Why is it still an issue? Why still unhealthy? I vote that it's because old habits die hard and you can't make a tiger change its stripes and neither is it easy to teach an old dog new tricks. That's what I say. Oh, also, people are stupid.

I get easily ruffled when things aren't going smoothly. Are my standards and expectations unreasonable? Is it too much to expect that we could ALL JUST GET ALONG?