Oh, the weather outside is frightful

27 12 2010

An honest-to-goddess snow storm—whoo hoo!

Last year, if you recall, New York shut itself down preemptively, announcing on Tuesday before a single damned flake fell that the entire world would be closed on Wednesday. Hmpf.

Well, there were a few reports on maybe Saturday or Sunday of a possible blizzard, but it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Maybe because it was over the Christmas weekend, maybe because kids wouldn’t be in school anyway, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but there was little hysteria.

There was, however, snow, blowing, blowing snow.

Trickster was either fascinated or flipped out by the initial sputterings from the sky:

After awhile, however, she got bored, and did what she usually does: sleep.

Jasper yelped in response to the howling wind, and stretched out his body full-length trying to whap at the snow (by the time I got the camera out he was, of course, nowhere in sight). He did, however, helpfully interfere in my attempt to get a shot of the wind-sculpted drift in the corner:

Thanks, kitty-boy.

The wind was quite the artist, turning what would have been gently heaps of snow into mini-alpine ridges:

I generally try to get out after a big storm—not too many chances to wear my snow boots!—but a hangover from the flu made it unwise for me to attempt anything more physical than, mm, blogging.

(Oh, I did also try to enter my grades, due today, on Webgrade, but either something was wrong with my username and password or something was wrong with the system, and so I failed. The appropriate response, regardless? Fuck me.)

Anyway, I have heat and hot water and am not stuck in an airport or at Penn Station or on a train—apparently a couple of Queens lines, complete with passengers, were bollixed for hours—so despite the flu-crud, I was content to remain in my wee apartment and look at the big ol’ windy and wintry world through my windows.


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you have done well it’s time to rest

29 07 2010

My beautiful Bean is gone.

Beanalea 1994-2010

Her name was inspired by a Jane Siberry song, ‘Everything Reminds Me of My Dog’: She has a line about Old folks remind me of my dog/My dog reminds old folks of their dogs (Barfy, Ruffo, Beanhead). . . . Bean! That’s it.

Chelsea had been driving my roommate and me crazy with her constant talk, so I thought another cat might help chill her out. I was in Minneapolis at the time, a couple of houses down from friends, and they went with me to the Humane Society to get a kitten.

We saw one group of kittens, then went into another room (the sick cat room, it turns out) for more. I had the name; I needed the cat to fit.

J., the driver, held up a long-haired black-and-white kitten and said ‘Get her! Get her!’ I didn’t want a long-hair, however, and demurred. (I did coerce convince J. to get that kitty herself; ‘Entropy’, she was named. Aptly.)

And then I found my Bean—full name, Beanalea—and took her home. She lived with Chelsea and me in three apartments in Minneapolis, one in Montreal, one in Somerville, and five in Brooklyn. She didn’t particularly like travelling, but she always settled in once we had, in fact, settled in.

Bean, Beanalea, Bean-goddammit (for a brief period when she was around 6 months), Binkins, Polar Bean, Lima Bean, Navy Bean, Gah-bahnzo Bean. . . she was my Bean.

My beautiful Bean.


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I’m watching my sweet mama from my vigil on this chair

5 07 2010

It’s almost time.

She’s been fading, fading, for months; I wasn’t sure she’d make it this long. But we are nearing the end.

I see her hunched-up walk and my breath catches in my throat. I scoop her up and hold her against my chest and tuck my chin into her fur and whisper No, not yet! I’m not ready.

And I set her back down and she walks fine and it’s clear that she’s not ready yet, either.

But it’s coming, and when she’s ready I’ll have to be, too.

Even if I’m not.

My beautiful Bean. . . !


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I watch you sleeping on the bed

9 03 2010

My beautiful Bean is sick.

Not desperately so, and perhaps not-imminently-fatally so, but she is ill, and it likely that this illness will at some point result in her death.

It pains me to say this, because I do not want my sweet old kitten to die, but I cannot ignore her decline.

Cannot. Will not.

I did ignore what was happening to Chelsea. It’s so clear, in retrospect, that she was sick for years, dying for months, and almost gone by the time I saw that gone was the best place for her. I spent money I didn’t have on a delusion that at 18 what little life she had in her was enough for a few more years.

It made the ending harder than it had to be for both of us.

So I won’t do that with Bean. I will see her, as she is, an old and sick cat. Oh, I’m doing what I can, within reason, to slow that decline, but at 15 1/2, ‘within reason’ amounts to home care and wishes.

Whether that decline is weeks or months or even a year, I have no idea.

But I’ll be ready, or readier, this time. Chelsea taught me that. Wishes or no, I have to see Bean clear.


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Tired of sleeping

30 12 2009

I do love to sleep.

When I think vacation I think: I can sleep in!

Weekends? Sleep in!

Days off? Yep, sleep in!

It’s not that I have anything against the morning (it’s afternoons I could do without) but my body and my brain have informed me—repeatedly—that they’d much prefer to remain tucked in and unconscious to any dawn awakenings.

When I was in high school, I could enjoy the early morning after a long night: after watching the moon rise red over Lake Michigan, rise into white, then fade away, we’d squint at the sprawling yellow elbowing its way over the horizon.

Or in Madison, I’d pull all-nighters before stumbling to class with that paper in hand.

Nonetheless, while I remain a night person, the last time I met the morning at the end of a long night was some years back, in Montreal, after hitting an after-hours dance club. It was March or February, I think, and a bit of shock to fall out of the dark club into a white, white (it was snowing) morning.

Can’t do that shit no more.

All of this is a very long prelude to the observation that even I, who in high school was known for my 13-14 hour sleep sessions, who will turn over if the damned radiator wakes me even minutes before the alarm goes off rather than get up, who requires a ritual to get out of bed each and every morning,  even I can have too much bed time.

I was mildly sick on Thursday, sicker on Friday, sicker sicker on Saturday, sicker sicker (with fever!) on Sunday, and, while recovering on Monday, was nonetheless still unable to rise with my alarm and go to work.

I slept. I got up, putzed around on the computer, then would take an hours-long nap. Read a bit, watch Netflix or Hulu, then to bed early. Repeat. Repeat.

All that goddamned sleep. When I finally woke after noon on Monday (after my abortive attempt to return to the working classes), I thought, God, I’m sick of lying down.

Fucking flu: Robbed me of one my one pure pleasure.

I actually didn’t mind getting up to go to work today.

I’m not too worried, tho’: I’m sure I’ll be silently cursing my fate when the radio blares tomorrow.


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Rooting thru my rutabega

19 07 2009

I am a lousy sick person.

I don’t ‘soldier on’ or ‘buck up’ or ‘git er done’ or any of that when I’m sick. Nope, I drag my sorry carcass home, try to sleep, sleep some more, and then, mm, sleep.

A little bit of reading, online and off, but no writing, no blogging, no trying to get in front of my class prep, no errands, no exercise.

Sleep, cough, sleep.

Of course, Jasper-the-vampire’s nocturnal rampages do add a bit of a variety, but not of the helpful sort.

(Okay, so, yeah, I watched some ‘Buffy’ on Hulu. Sue me.)

(And when the hell are they going to get more seasons?!)

Anyway. There’s the weekend.

———————-

Reading a story in the NYTimes on Green-Wood cemetery and wondering, once again, about my [lack of] plans for the forever-future.

No, I wasn’t that sick.

Still, the thought recurs: Where to rest my bones? Along with, Who will do to the digging/burning/tossing into the sea?

For better and for worse, New York is now my city, but I don’t know that I want to be buried here.

Bills and money and work and dating and life and writing  and I’ll spend my time worrying over my funeral.

Sounds about right.

—————————

Is there anything I could have said about the Sotomayor hearings that hasn’t already been said?

Didn’t think so.

—————————-

The virus that ran rampant through my body got in the way of my responding to a post at The Pursuit of Harpyness on the response to the death of a 69 yo woman who had given birth to twins 3 years earlier.

. . . And I was going to discuss it in brief, here, but then it got all out of control and so I made it a different post. Which may or may not get posted.

That’s how it is.

——————————-

This American Life is airing a story about bedbugs, and just finished a piece on cockroaches crawling into peoples’ ears.

Good lord.

Makes me want to puncture my eardrums.

———————–

This course I’m teaching is kicking my ass.

I’ve taught a version of it—bioethics—to undergraduates before, but it didn’t go well, so I completely revamped it. Out with a general discussion of genetics and stem cells and biotechnology, and in with concentration on human embryonic stem cells and assisted reproductive technologies.

(An aside: I’m using Liza Mundy’s Everything Conceivable to survey the ART field. Recommended.)

So far, so good, but man, shit has changed since I last taught it. This is the bummer about teaching about tech: Unlike, say, the ideas of Plato or Machiavelli, technologies do change, and are changed by the societies into which they’re introduced.

In other words, I can’t coast.

I hate that.

———————-

Re-entering the world of biotech and bioethics has caused me, once again, to question whether I should have stuck with it.

I know, I can only make decisions based on the information I have at the time, so retrospective decision-making is pointless, but.

But when one is dissatisfied with one’s current life, and one’s previous life had its pleasures, it’s tough not to wonder why I ditched that previous life.

Again, I know: how easy to forget the dissatisfactions of that previous life.

Still, I’ve spent my life jumping, and landing always with an eye toward the next jump. When I moved to New York, I said, That’s it. This is home.

Only I put a hidden asterisk by the declaration: (*If it works).

As if this place, and my life in this place, is supposed to work for me, as opposed to me working for my life.

I am not the first to note that a person carries her troubles with her, so it shouldn’t surprise me that my dissatisfactions have made their way to Brooklyn.

So now what? I bitch about the something more and the something else and then do nothing more or nothing else.

Can I blame that on the cold virus?


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While I was watching/you did a slow dissolve

30 04 2009

Skinny Cat is dying. Kidney disease.

She’s home, now. I had to bring her home.

She’s not in any pain, the vet said. She’s not suffering.

Still, he said

I know. This is not unexpected. But I was not prepared, not today.

I wanted her home, for a little while longer.

Just a little while longer.


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