memes

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Seven Snapshots on a Sunday

Carla has been home with me since the Friday before Thanksgiving, and finally goes back to school tomorrow. My husband took Thursday and Friday off. We’ve been watching movies together and playing games and doing our separate creative pursuits. It’s been lovely spending time with them and I know I’ll feel a little sad when the house is empty. But we have all of today together, although I think it will be mostly a day of laundry and cleaning and preparing for our houseguests.

Here are a few snapshots of what started out on a low note, but ended up being pretty lovely. 

`1. Carla decorated the table for Thanksgiving.

We put out a selection of cheeses to munch on while cooking. I am partial to the caramelized onion cheese (right most) from Trader Joe’s. And yes, those are Hanukkah plates we used for the cheese and crackers.

2. We were in the car and Carla was marveling at how gorgeous the sky was.

She asked me to hand her my phone and this is the photo she took. I love that she is so attuned to the beauty of the world around us.

3. The only finished room in our house.

My husband and I finally hung artwork up in our bedroom and it finally feels finished. It’s smaller than our previous bedroom, but I love it. I am also loving our flannel sheets, which are SO soft. It is very difficult to get out of bed in the morning when I’m so cozy in these sheets! I still don’t have a lamp for my bedside table, but my husband ordered some this weekend.

4. A funny tweet (if one with questionable grammar) that I sent to my best friend and her other best friend.

My best friend and I have slowly been rebuilding our friendship and it’s such a relief and a comfort to me. The three of us are going to plan a Zoom call, 2020 style, later this month since we all live in different states. I don’t know why we don’t do them more often, but we got out of the habit.

5. My breakfast for the past three days.

These are the only Thanksgiving leftovers I care about: garlic goat cheese mashed potatoes and gravy. (With plenty of pepper.) For some reason, the gravy didn’t turn out particularly well this year. My mother saved it, but it wasn’t the rich, dreamy gravy of Thanksgivings past. Some combination of me messing up the proportions and our new oven not cooking the turkey and pan veggies to the deep caramelized brown necessary for developing rich, delicious pan drippings. But Past Suzanne was smart and ordered a container of mushroom gravy from Whole Foods, and it is QUITE delicious. Especially when paired with mashed potatoes.

6. I can hardly believe it, but our holiday cards are IN THE MAIL.

The only reason we pushed to get them out so soon this year is because they are serving as change-of-address notifications, too, and I’m hoping they reach most people before they send their own cards. We’ll see if that calculation works in our favor. But they are OUT. Woo! This is literally the only thing I have done to prepare for the holidays.

7. The very first hint of Christmas around my house.

My mother is much better at being on top of holiday planning than I am. This beautiful wreath arrived the day after Thanksgiving. It smells like Christmas! That doesn’t mean I am ready yet to decorate, but I am ready to think about decorating, which at least is a step in the right direction.

Happy Sunday, Internet!

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Weigh In Wednesday: Hypothetical Cat; Pet Names

I had a dream the other night that I borrowed a cat. It was a kitten, actually, probably three to six months old – that skinny, lithe stage of kittenhood. The kitten was a dark grey tabby. His name was Craig. 

My family and I sometimes discuss cat names. Our goal is to come up with the most ridiculous possible name for a cat. So far, our favorites are Jeremy and Trey (said always in the accent of the SNL Californians skit; see 4:03 in this video). I like the idea of having a pet named Pickle, but that strikes me as more of a dog name. Or maybe more appropriate for a Guinea pig.

My husband – who self-identifies as Not A Cat Person – took me and Carla to a cat convention earlier this fall. It was a long drive in pretty crummy weather and I think it may have been the most bored I’ve ever seen my husband (although he didn’t say A WORD), but Carla and I had a blast. I wasn’t sure what to expect. There were booths of cat toys and cat towers. There was a cat costume contest. There were meet and greets with cat influencers (I am not kidding). But also, there were so many cats! Not all of the cats were available for petting – and, of those, not all of them were in the mood – but we did get to pet a lot of cats. 

If you have read this blog for any amount of time, you know that Carla is an avid animal lover. But do you know this about me? I love cats. LOVE THEM. They are my favorite domestic animal. (My favorite wild animal is the porcupine.) If I had my druthers, I would have a house full of cats. 

Carla, as I’ve noted, is an animal lover. She does not discriminate per species. I think she would welcome a menagerie of pets, from snakes to parrots, hamsters to fish. Her favorite animal, I think, is a dog, and she and my husband would own a dog in a heartbeat if I weren’t standing in their way. (Once, when Carla was maybe five, she said in that charming/alarming matter-of-fact way of children, “If you died, we could get a dog.” Yes, there’s always a bright side my sweet child.)  

Now: brace yourself, because this next bit may be unpleasant.

I do not want a dog. 

I appreciate dogs. And I love seeing dogs on your blog and in my email and in your holiday cards and in my text messages. Seriously, you cannot tell me enough anecdotes or send me enough photos of your dog (or child) (or non-dog pet). I love your dog! I do. But I do not want a dog of my own.

I am a cat person. I really hope this does not change our relationship. 

The thing is, I am allergic to cats. (And dogs, if we’re being honest. Yes, yes, I know all about hypoallergenic dogs.) So I have never gotten a cat, despite the deep yearning in my soul. 

Nonetheless, my husband and I maybe started saying things like, “Perhaps when we have a new, bigger house, we could get a cat.” And the more we said little “maybes” like this, the more my desire has ballooned.

So I was especially keen, at the cat convention, to hold and pet and rub my face against a Siberian. This is a type of cat that has low levels of the protein that causes allergies. It’s a long-haired cat, though, and I have visions of pooplets adhering to butt fur, and visions of cathair tumbleweeds collecting in every corner of my home. But they are very cute cats. They have very agreeable, friendly, doglike personalities, which the Siberian breeder’s partner said pointedly to my husband; “That’s what the men like to hear,” he said, and then shared an anecdote about he never liked cats until he started dating a Siberian breeder and now he loves them. The breeder had two very adorable kittens and I snuggled them and put my face right up into their fur (which I’m sure was a little alarming to the breeder, and maybe the kitten) and I didn’t have ANY REACTION the whole day. 

This isn’t an announcement of anything. It’s just a fantasy at this point. I have too much going on right now to add another living being to the mix. Also, Siberian kittens are pricey, OMG. Also also, I need to get past my fear of loving a thing that will inevitably die; it’s hard enough being confronted with that truth when it comes to my parents and brother and husband and child. 

But maybe, one of these days, we’ll have a little kitten. And I will definitely try to convince my family to name it Craig. 

When I was growing up, we had a lot of cats. They were barn cats, and some of them didn’t last very long. But others were beloved family pets for years. Naming them was one of my favorite things, and I always leaned toward human names. We had, at different times, two pairs of tabbies: Scarlett and Rhett (which is a very odd set of names to give two cats from the same litter, but it made sense at the time), and Rebecca and Josh (yes, I named a cat Josh). There was a beautiful black cat who visited us occasionally – we called him Romeo and I’m guessing he was responsible for Rebecca’s litter of kittens. (Spay and neuter your pets promptly, folks!) Of those, I remember a pale grey cat with white spots I named Cooper and a white cat with seal-point markings I called Kimberly. We kept Kimberly and gave all the other kittens away. A friend adopted one of them – a little black fluffy girl cat with a white chest – and named her Panda, which was short for Pandemonium. Speaking of punny names, I had a friend whose brother raised pigs for 4-H and he named two of them Oscar and Mayer. A little mean, that. 

I used to show my cats for 4-H. Kimberly won a blue ribbon, which makes me giggle because even though she looked like a Siamese, she was 100% pure barn cat. 

What would you name a cat? What pets have you had in your lifetime, and what were their names? What’s the best or worst possible name you can think of for a pet, and why do you think some names work better than others? Like Oliver is a great pet name – I’ve known several dogs and one cat named Oliver – but the idea of naming a dog or cat Brian or Frank or Anthony or Eric or Margaret or Jean or Susan makes me giggle?  

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here.