For starters, nothing is louder than two cats with an empty food bowl. They’ll amuse themselves for ages waiting for someone to bring the food. Doing things like using chainsaws, running into furniture at top speed (repeatedly; I guess it’s fun for them), knocking things over, finding the one cat toy with a bell in it that you’ve forgotten to confiscate and carrying it through the apartment at a trot, turning into small elephants and chasing each other around the room, etc.

Even after you feed them, however, they now KNOW that you’re awake. So now it’s time for them to start caterwauling at the door (what? You’re an INSIDE CAT. You go outside on a HARNESS. And you’ve never been outside in any way at 5 FREAKING AM. What play date are YOU missing?), eating at high volume (CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH), cat-fighting for fun and profit, or scratching at any one of a thousand exciting objects including:

They’ve gone suspiciously silent now. I can’t see them in the darkness beyond my laptop screen. They may currently be plotting my doom.

Secondly, there’s nothing ON at 5 AM. Not even HBO has anything good. Every single channel is either infomercials or cartoons… which says a lot about what television thinks of the intelligence of the average insomniac. We must be easily amused or easily persuaded into buying overpriced crap we don’t actually need from people who smile too much. Also note that most children’s cartoons now are simultaneously better drawn and worse drawn than the ones around when I was a kid.

Ahhh, I remember that halcyon time. Before the days of the internet, it was! If you wanted fanfiction, you had to write it yourself! And if you wanted to buy anything you had to leave the house and walk ten miles! Up a hill! Both ways!

And we were *proud* to have it!

And usually I think I have too many webpages I habitually read each morning. At 5 AM you discover there never is enough webpages. Some of them even go missing. Maybe they’re still in bed, where yours truly should be.

I’ve no idea when my body decided that six hours or less is an appropriate length of sleep.

Thirdly, a Crochet Lite H hook makes a very passable magic wand in a dark room.

Well, it’s 7 AM and the husband’s awake finally. Time to start the day. Wish me luck…

Tags: bless me yarn art, cats, courage, dusk, insomnia, midnight, sleep

Holidays tend to be problematic for me; I always find myself overstressed and hyper-vigilant. I’ve had bad things happen around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sometimes other people are so concerned with having the perfect time and presenting the perfect image that one’s best just isn’t enough, not even near enough.

In this holiday season I have to find the reason. I have to find the joy in it again, and define these days for myself in new healthy ways.

I’ve decided that finally for once I need to sit down at Thanksgiving and figure out at last what I’m freaking thankful for.

I’m thankful I have a roof over my head. Things have been up and down all this year and a few times I wasn’t sure if we’d make it but in the end I have a roof over my head, the husband, and the cats.

I’m thankful I have my wonderful patrons. Their love, interest, and support has often times been the difference between Rent and No Rent, or Food and No Food. They have had faith in my abilities, delight in my talents, and trust that I will follow through and repay their hard-earned money with my best efforts. I try every day to deserve the honor they give me.

I’m thankful that I have the cats. Rarely anything helps more than coming home and getting a loving headbutt kiss from Midnight, or having Dusky climb in my lap, up my chest and refuse to move until he’s been cuddled tightly, fitting his head under my chin. Thank the gods for good smart loving black cats.

I’m thankful that I have yarn. I have soooo much yarn. My stash is sizable. Any time of the day or night, when inspiration hits I can go to it and nine times out of ten find exactly what I need to make what’s on my mind. It overflows my cabinets and breaks the hanging wardrobe we bought for its prodigious size, but I love it, and it’s all mine.

I’m thankful that I have a vision that drives me. I live to have a hook in my hand; I live to be making new things that the world has never seen before (or old things in completely new ways). I live to fill my house with color and texture and vibrancy. I live to someday fulfill the dream of having a yarn shop all my own.

I’m thankful most of all for my wonderful husband, the family that the gods have given me. He’s been with me for years and I love him more every single day. He’s shown me what it means to have a real partner. He’s shown me what it’s like to be really loved. There was a lot of sturm und drang when we first got together; it’s passed over us like a wave over the ocean. Once you get below the surface, all is calm. We’ve sacrificed a lot to be together; in the end I measure all that I’ve given and I count it cheap. He is the reason for my season, all my seasons.

Happy Thanksgiving, mo anamchara. Most of all I’m thankful I’m loved so deeply by you.

Tags: bless me yarn art, cats, dusk, holidays, midnight, patrons, RealJob(TM), stress, the husband, the stash

I’ve never participated in a seance, but I think I’d like to as a lark. Usually when I talk with the dead (or more often, they talk TO me) we’ve done so under much less formal circumstances. Sometimes it’s been someone opening the door for me when I have my hands full; sometimes it’s been someone using the shower and taking up all my shampoo/conditioner and breaking my soap; sometimes it’s been something as simple as knowing where the grave yards are, feeling them as I go past. Bottom line, I’ve had dealings with people that other people can’t see but who still manage to make their presence known — but they’ve all been pretty off the cuff. (At some point I’ll explain the above references, I can assure you.)

Who would I summon if we had a seance? That’s a difficult question. Assuming in mortem veritas (and pardon my probably atrocious Latin), who WOULDN’T be good to call? Death leaves so many questions unanswered to the living. Michael Jackson (or Marilyn Monroe, or Anna-Nicole Smith, or Janice Joplin, or Elvis, or any of those that died young under odd circumstances), was it an accident or did you mean to do it? Shakespeare, did you really write all these plays, or was it someone else? Lee Harvey Oswald, were you the only shooter or was someone out there on that grassy knoll? John Lennon, seriously, Yoko? Seriously?

If seances were real (and I’ve never heard of one that was), they’d be incredibly useful. Very few murders would go unsolved; very few wills would be challenged. There could always be one last goodbye.

Although I think it best that some things are allowed to *die*, and that some relationships come to an end. Being married several times in a very Southern Gothic sort of way will do that to a girl. I know that there are definitely some people I would not mind never hearing from again, whether in this life or the next.

On this All Souls Day, I’d also like to mention my two fur-children, Midnight and Dusk. They are both male black cats; Midnight is around 8 years old and Dusk is around 2 1/2. Dusk was a shelter kitten, Midnight was an “oops” by a co-worker’s indoor/outdoor not-yet-quite-spayed-but-we-were-planning-to-do-so cat. No matter how they got here, they have been so worth keeping. Nothing makes you feel more loved than a good cat. A good cat is what a dog should be: smart, independent, but loyal to the end, affectionate, gentle, and delighted just to be with you.

Two black cats cross my path every day, but I don’t believe it’s affected my luck at all unless to improve it. I don’t know what I’d do without my boys. Their unquestioning, unfailing love and devotion has saved my heart more than once.

And if I had more space in the house (and if the husband had someone else to help with the litterboxes), I’d get at least one more black cat because since people are stupid and superstitious, black cats are less likely to be adopted. I’d like to give as many black cats as I feasibly can a good happy long and loving life. And I know that when my cats pass away (may the gods delay that day for many many years), they will be followed by a long line of more black cats — the brilliant, insightful, fuzzy terrible toddlers of my world.

They’re currently curled up on the couch, not destroying anything (for the moment), asleep and SNORING delightfully. I love my boys.

So there’s this bizarre idea that I might actually have an entry that only talks about *one thing* at a time. I don’t know where anyone got that idea…

Tags: cats, dead, dusk, midnight, seance, vox mortuum