You like cats, right?

i know i’ve been mia for quite some time now, and it’s because i am looking for a new job and preparing to move to hershey, pa. crazy, i know… but also exciting. not gonna lie, one nathan gerard is the reason i’m uprooting myself in comfortable little corning and taking all my belongings 3 hours south. this is a pretty big step, and i’m becoming more and more psyched and more and more freaked out. bring it on!

anywhoo, as the title suggests, this post is about my cats. yes, i’m about to embark on the big “no-no” of internet interactions: gushing about my cats. pictures included. enjoy.

this is elliot. as you can see, he is made of ears and sass. i got him when he was about 6 months old from a coworker, and his adoring clingyness won my heart in an instant. he’s probably the most obnoxious animal in existence. i love him.
here he is giving me one of his patented “FEED ME NOW BITCH” looks. when my lovely beth lived with me, we voiced all his thoughts. he always thinks in caps lock and is quite vulgar.
i love my kitchen, and i spend a great deal of time there because it’s bright and has a great table to work on. el also grew to love the kitchen, mainly because there are windows. he would sit on this bench and meow out the window all day. ALL DAY. did i mention he has the most obnoxious meow ever? yeaaaaah…
OH HAI I’M ON YOUR BIKE. JUST KEEP WATCHING YOUR MOVIE AND I’LL JUST KEEP MEOWING. IT’S ALL GOOD.
so el haaaaaaaaated beth. probably because she would grab him and squeeze him every time she saw him. frankly, i’d hate her too if she did that to me. this is the face he made when he realized she was staying around for a while. sorry el. you’ll live (and he did).
this is charlamagne hobbes. i always call him charlie, so i’m pretty sure that’s what his real name is. but sometimes i like to have pretentious names for things, so there’s that. charlie was given to me by my nate, he was a poor little bean rescued from under a shed or somewhere equally unpleasant. charlie is the sweetest most ridiculous creature alive. he never bites, he licks. he never meows, he croaks. he never lies down gracefully, he plomphs. he sleeps in the bathtub. he lets el chase him around. he’s so cute!
it took elliot and charlie several days to get along. well, i should say it took elliot several days to decide to be nice to charlie. char would just bounce around and el would growl and hiss at him. it was rather ridiculous. this is right when they started being friends. i remember seeing that they were within a few feet of each other and el wasn’t making some sort of mean noise. finally!
i miss charlie being such a little bean. this, by the by, is pretty much just the cats’ chair. i mean, i’ll sit in, but i also am used to having cat hair all over me so it’s no big.
this is just your stereotypical “melt your heart” cat picture. there will surely be more so consider this fair warning.
heh, this picture makes me laugh. they were both trying to sit on the ledge, but el was being his mean self and trying to push charlie off with his butt. i actually have a recent picture almost identical to this, except they’re the same size. this is also the door/window thing that leads to my wonderful roof, which i have enjoyed many an evening on with my pipe. i will miss that roof.
charlie has since grown into his head, and el has not yet grown out of his utter disdain for anything other than himself.
um, yeah. litterbox. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE. whenever i clean it completely out, el goes and rolls in it. not sits, ROLLS. charlie wants a piece of the action too, but little mcfatty there isn’t budging. ugh.
so to make himself feel better, charlie reclines in the tub. he loves the tub. he licks the water off the bottom, tries to shred the shower curtain, and just generally makes a nuisance of himself in there. that’s also the cat’s water dish, which i moved to the tub after they knocked water all over the kitchen floor every morning. i got kind of sick of slipping in cold water at 6am, so there’s my solution.
here we have dorkus maximus and the goob partaking in their favorite activity: sitting in the sun, being generally useless. i guess you could count “providing cuteness” as a use… they’re also extremely adept at exterminating bugs around the apartment, for which i am eternally grateful. we’ve got a good tag-team routine going there, which usually starts with them finding a bug and ends with me flushing it before they can eat it. blegh.
he has this little squished face with wonky eyes. how could you not love him? did i mention he croaks instead of meows? it’s hilarious!
everyone together now: “aaaaawwwww”… it also should be noted that right after this picture he licked my camera. wtf cat.
seriously i wish i could just lie in sunbeams all day.  no fair. also note how big charlie’s gotten and how big elliot hasn’t gotten.
ok story time. elliot, being a male cat, decided that he needed to start peeing around the apartment. which is great for everyone except me and charlie and anyone else who enters my apartment. one of the things he peed in was my toaster, which i discovered one day when i went to make toast with nate. i believe his words were “i’ve peed on enough campfires to know that smell. burning piss.” yeah not cool. a toaster? really, el? anyways, another popular spot turned out to be my bed, which was doubly not cool. after spending countless hours cleaning the mattress and washing the sheets, i took preemptive measures and used a plastic painter’s sheet to cover the bed. one day i came home from work to find charlie snuggled in a little warm plasticky cave. nice.
i have since gotten both elliot and charlie fixed, and all pee instances have ceased. however, after elliot was fixed he had one last hurrah. apparently, it takes a bit for the testosterone to level out and for everything to chill after the surgery. i had the neuter certification on top of a stack of papers on my coffee table, and i went to work. i came home to find that just the certification page had been knocked to the floor, and the sentence “this certifies that elliot has been neutered” had a nice little pee spot on it. i think he knew exactly what he was doing. punk.
charlie is most certainly always the center of attention, but el is usually not far behind. he reminds me of some overprotective mother in this.
despite his severe obnoxiousness (ie, keeping me awake for hours at night by meowing NONSTOP at himself in the bathroom mirror. he liked it because it echoed. thankfully fixing him stopped that too…), el is really quite loveable. he cuddles withe me whenever i sit or sleep, and he just generally likes being in the same room as me, if not on my lap. you could pet him all day and it wouldn’t be enough, and he’s very mild-mannered, not one to bite or claw. he is quite shy, but charlie has helped socialize him and he’s usually curious enough to wander by and check you out.
have i mentioned that this punk, who falls off of flat surfaces all the time, has gotten out and gone roof hopping? yeah. so that screen door doohickey used to be quite broken in the screen area, but i would keep it open when it was hot out anyway. one afternoon (before i got charlie), i was sitting in the kitchen enjoying a popsicle and futzing around on the computer. el was staring intently out the screen at some bird or squirrel, when suddenly he just blasted through the screen and out onto the roof. i stood there, frozen in panic, and then threw my popsicle into the sink and followed him out there. the roof is nice and flat right in front of the door, but then angles around the corner and juts up into impossible steep ridiculousness with all sorts of nooks and ledges and such. well el was just happy as a lark, bounding around 90 degree angles and onto various parts of the roof. ignoring my calls and threats, he proceeded to leap the several foot gap to the neighbor’s roof and disappeared over the other side. i ran out to the road, and followed him as he hopped 5 houses down. at this point, it was clear that he wasn’t going to come down anytime soon, and my only option was to go home and seethe. my popsicle was melted, my cat was who knows how many roofs down, and all i could think of was that he falls off the bed if you just look at him wrong. well twenty minutes later he’s at the screen on my roof, waiting for me to let him in. he’s lucky he’s so cute. damn cat.
(this is not mentioning the numerous other times he got out onto the roof and got STUCK, forcing me to climb out and wrestle him down through power lines and who knows what. it’s a miracle that both of us are alive right now.)
i snapped this a moment too late, but they were both sleeping on those boxes. in case you can’t tell, this is my pantry. whenever i open the door to the pantry, BOOM both cats are in there. why. i have accidentally locked one of them in so many times now they’ve learned how to push open the door from the inside.
i think his little brain is broken. it wasn’t much to sneeze at to begin with, but when nate was here the one time, we got a lazer pointer (i had one with el, and he loved it). charlie is insanely fast and surprisingly graceful when chasing the lazer, but then he can’t seem to accept that it’s gone. he knows i’m controlling the little red dot from the little thing in my hand (he gets all excited when i pick the pointer up. he actually knows the jingle of the key ring and comes running)… but he continues to search for the dot for hours after i’ve put it away. i really think i broke his brain.
does anyone else notice that clean clothes are cat magnets? if you can’t tell, he’s lying on a pant leg. a freshly laundered, previously cat hair free pant leg. thanks, char. i swear i set the pants down and he was just suddenly on them. same thing happens with boxes. they claim every box, whether or not it still has stuff in it.
so it’s probably hard to see, but the hair around their ears is all spiky. they both have earmites, poor things, and i have to clean their ears out every so often. i was just using warm water and cotton balls, but i had to take el to the vet once because i thought he had an ear infection. turns out it was just the mites, and the vet told me that cleaning with mineral oil will get the wax out and suffocate the mites, also allowing the medication to reach the mites and kill the remaining offenders. after searching the drug store, the only mineral oil i could find was scented baby oil, so i had to use it. they did not like it, and i had to wrap them in towels to make kitty tacos to even get close to their ears. it was out of control. but hey, clean ears. to make up for practically sitting on them and swabbing their ears out, i gave them a can of wet food, the cat equivalent of mcdonalds. mmmm.
el loves to sleep in high places. this is the top of my jewelry armoire (yeah i have no idea how to spell french words), which is the same height as a dresser. in fact, when he sits on the dresser, he prefers to perch on the tin that holds my necklaces, since it is at least 3 inches higher than the dresser. silly kitty.
so that’s about it… for now. i seriously have hundreds more pictures and stories i could post, but it’s late and i think 27 pictures will have to do at the moment. el and char are both asleep, which is a good indication that i should be as well. ciao.

Something old from something new from something old

That’s right. I turned a secondhand plain white summer dress into a funky tye dyed little thing. It’s so easy!
I found this dress at the Salvation Army months ago, and I’ve only worn it once. It fit me great, but I don’t particularly care for or look good in white. It was just floating around my closet, begging to be worn but not really making a great case as to why. I’ve dyed plenty of things before – a scarf, 2 pairs of jeans, countless tshirts – so I’m not sure why it never occurred to me to dye this perfectly white dress. Duh! A quick trip to Michaels and a few bucks later and BAM purple dye sure to spruce up the poor thing. But wait, a few rubber bands and it’s time to go to town! I took a few pictures for posterity’s sake…

So here’s the dress, dye, and rubber bands. I twirled sections around the bottom hem and tied them off, and also did a quick spin with the mid-section and used a huge rubber band. It’s weird to think that even the smallest crease can resist the dye, but it works like a charm. Now it’s time to make the dyebath.

I grabbed a bucket from under my sink (you can dye in the washer, but yeaaaaah I don’t have one of those in my apartment) and some salt. The directions on the side of the dye are incredibly specific – x amount of dye per pound of fabric and x amount of salt in x amount of water – and I’ve never once followed them. I just pour a good amount of salt in the bucket and wet my fabric in the sink. Then I toss the bucket in my tub and start filling it with the hottest water from the tap. Pour in about half the bottle of dye, more or less, and stir to dissolve the salt. Stick the fabric in and stir away! Yes, I’m using a plastic spatula. It’s my dying spatula. The dye bottle says to stir continuously for 30 minutes, so in my brilliance, I put the bucket on a chair in the kitchen and watched an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun while stirring. I may or may not be addicted to that show right now.

Next, you rinse the heck out of the fabric. Rinsing in the tub is relatively safe, and dye that doesn’t wash down the drain can be cleaned up with a little bleach and elbow grease. The directions are to rinse until the water runs clear, which could take a while. While I was swishing my dress around, I thought back fondly on all the times I’ve dyed things before. There was that big dorm event at college where I tye dyed my pillowcase and that time in the art building where Beth and I used the giant sinks in the ceramic studio to dye pants and dresses. My favorite memory, however, is one of the tye dye days I had with my mom. She watched the neighbor kids all summer and we’d always do fun crafts. We had gone out and gotten shirts, rubber bands, and dye, and then set up shop in the backyard with buckets and a clothesline. The best part was when she ran inside and got a pair of my dad’s underwear. We tye dyed it bright pink and hung it on the line.

Oh hey, my dress is done. Saweet! I love the way it turned out! The best thing about tye dye is that you never really know how it’s going to turn out, and it’s pretty much always fantastic. Now the dress just has to hang dry overnight. I also love waking up in the morning to find that the cats have pulled it down and dragged it across the bathroom floor. Gives it that nice little floor spice look. Mmmm. Floor spice.

Anyway, wash it separately the first few times and stick it in the dryer for at least 15 minutes to help set the dye. If you’re really paranoid, just always wash it with your darks (that is, if you even separate your laundry. pssssh.). Don’t forget to model it proudly in your doorway, and a cat always makes a great accessory. Ciao!

182.32 miles

That’s how far away my love is. It takes so long to get there… even though on the map it’s only a few inches.

I just made the drive back after spending an amazing six days celebrating my birthday and just being with him. It’s so counter intuitive to voluntarily get in a car and drive 3 hours away from who you want to be with most. I hate it. I hate being so far away, and add two work schedules and a clinical schedule to our lives and you can guess how often i get to see him. We went almost 2 months apart once. I am well aware that there are couples that spend close to a year apart, but that really doesn’t make me feel any less pain.

I am planning on moving down to be closer to him in May. I’m both excited and terrified by this plan, having never figured out how to align getting an apartment and a job in another state. I shouldn’t be extremely concerned; I have to remember that millions of people have done this before me. I survived the first move, out of my parent’s house, so this is the next step.

I do love my apartment here in Corning, though. It’s small and sweet with a crumbling charm all it’s own. The light filters through the stained glass border on the large middle window in my living room, and the kitchen is bright and welcoming. The door to the roof may be ridiculously rickety, but it serves its purpose and I love the “porch” it leads to. I have filled the space to the brim with my belongings, but there always seems to be room for one more kitchen appliance or colorful tapestry. I have learned to be economical with what little flat surfaces there are; doing my art on the kitchen table and then hastily cleaning it for dinner. In fact, I basically live at my kitchen table; it’s become the all-purpose surface.

The only things I would change would be the shower head (it’s not higher than my head), the kitchen sinks (they are barely deep enough to soak a pot), and the narrow unlit stairwell (how many times has that light bulb burned out?). Still, I’ve made do with even those inconveniences. I got a swiveling shower head that I can point straight out, I do my dishes in the bathtub, and I’ve got a light on my keychain that brightens the darkest alley. I am content here, except for the distance between me and Palmyra. I’ve no doubt that I will find an equally charming apartment there, and I will make it feel like home in no time.

Until then, I will travel the 182.32 miles to see my love for a few days at a time; and I will cherish every minute we spend together. It’s also a lovely drive through the valleys and along the Susquehanna river.

Oh, and there’s also these guys for me here… but obviously they’ll also be coming with me down to Pennsylvania.

Say hello to Charlie (orange) and Elliot (gray). Charlie’s full name is Charlemagne Hobbes, but I’ve never called him that. Usually it’s Charliepants, Charzard, or Charzipan. Elliot is just El; and they both are goobs, poops, doods, or beans.

I love them dearly and could relate punkish stories of their antics for hours. Someday I might record my favorite ones, but for now I’ll just say that they are both curled up at my feet, cuddled together and asleep. These are the moments I think back on when they decide to practice their tag-team destruction antics.

Ahh, life.