Giving a cat liquid meds

Speak soothingly while smooshing cat between stomach and surface of table. Use thumb and forefinger to force jaws open. Place end of dropper as far back as possible in cat’s throat without actually touching any surface that might make cat gag. Quickly squirt out cold, bubble-gum flavored antibiotic liquid (first dose of 2). When cat’s gag reflex kicks in and forces dropper out, squirt half of liquid down cat’s chin and onto table and knock over remaining antibiotic whose convenient dropper-cap suddenly seems less convenient. Quickly force cat’s jaws shut to hold in what remains. Stroke cat’s throat when not busy removing clinging pointy claws from arm flesh or righting bottle of antibiotic. Attempt to gently stroke back in pink drool bubbles that have begun to emerge from cat’s mouth. Inadvertently cover cat with pink drool when cat begins to struggle and hands must double as forcible restraint devices. Smear cat’s front paws through spilled liquid. Curse…in a soothing tone.

Repeat. Try to temporarily ignore pink drool streams emerging from cat’s mouth. Take calculated look at sink and roll of paper towels halfway across room. Make a lunge for it. Notice pink stains on freshly pressed (and ever so hairy) white shirt as cat leaps from table and runs to safety under bed, shaking head all the while and scattering drooly pink antibiotic across furniture, walls, floors, fireplaces and other items you foolishly failed to cover in plastic sheeting. Spend several minutes attempting to lure cat out from under bed. Notice the time and give up. Clean up quickly and race to workplace. Use full roll of scotch tape to remove most hair from shirt. Slump in chair and/or carry around notepad to mask pink stains. Return home and discover pink panther paw-prints leading from bedroom to computer. Notice paw-prints on keyboard and mouse. Wonder what cat was using the computer for. Try not to think about the fact that “hit men” came up in recent saved searches just before “tuna delivery.”

Repeat.

Foolishly believe you’ll have your revenge later when you bathe the cat.

How to traumatize small children with a piñata

I went to my niece's 6th birthday party on Saturday. My brother and his wife are big fans of the party piñata, and it's a fun tradition. Little kids heaving a stick (ever-so-lightly) against bamboo shelled papier mache candy-holding goodness. Julia's party had a puppy theme this year, so they ended up w/ a Blue's Clues piñata or something vaguely resembling that.

I was talking to one of the guests' moms as my brother was stringing up ol' Blue. She was Irish--not sure how many years in this country--but fresh enough to still have a fresh viewpoint. We were talking about the more disturbing aspects of the piñata tradition. For her, small children pounding away at a star or something like that was no biggie; small children pounding away at a favorite cartoon character, screaming "Kill it, kill it!" on the other hand...okay, yeah, maybe a little twisted. Of course, she had a sense of humor about it, just also the slightest, um, discomfort.

So we'd only just begun to psychoanalyze and deconstruct the finer points of the white hegemony co-opting Mexican tradition and the history of southern aggression (i.e. I was about to say: "Well, we stole it from Mexico, so I guess you have to blame them, but, um, that sounds bad, er-uh...)

Luckily, I didn't have a chance to open my mouth, so everything went just fine. The pinata was strung and ready to go, the kids were gathered and herded outside into a line, little kids first, bigger kids last. Everyone under the age of 9 or so gets to take a whack.

Ol' Blue proved a worthy adversary. Whoever built him made him well. Finally, after much swinging and cries of "Stop! Little toddler Susie's wandered up right behind you!" and all the assorted drama that go with piñata-destroying, a 7-year-old got a solid enough hit in to just bust the gut. I few pieces of candy dropped. One or two more thwacks and Blue was good to go. My brother did that thing that piñata-wranglers do and began to yank the rope to shake out the candy--a gesture usually followed by showers of sweetness, greedy scrambling and squeals of delight.

But this day, it was not to be.

Whoever made Blue's body did a great job. Whoever made his neck...eh, little bit of a slacker. After just a shake or two, Blue's head popped off his body and shot up as the body descended, finally tangling in the rope about 4 feet above the body and lolling there helplessly.

In fairness, this didn't actually traumatize anyone. Mostly people were just trying not to pee themselves from laughter. My brother in-law, in-law (my sister-in-law's brother) did threaten to send my brother the therapy bills for his son. I was happy to see the Irish woman also doubled over with tears coming out of her eyes (in a good way).

And all was captured on camera. Ah, it's good to have some home movies that you can really look forward to.

How to get 19 meals out of a $4 chicken

So, money is tight. Not a shocker, being a single home-owner in Austin who works for the university and has student loans to pay off. Lots of them. It's the financial kiss of death.

So I bought this lovely fat chicken from the HEB the other day, on sale, and out of some mix of boredom and culinary curiosity, decided to see how far I could take it while still having tasty, more or less healthy meals. Warning: I'm a little bit of a food snob. Not bad, less picky than some people I know, but almost incapable of eating anything that comes out of a can, and utterly in love w/ cooking from scratch.

Day 1: Roast chicken with rosemary and lemon, stuffed with potatoes spiked with the same plus capers:

Verdict: Seriously yum.

Day 3 (weekend): Some people would advise you to bung the whole lot by now. I'm saying, I've still got 1 to 2 days before things get into anything like a danger zone, so.... Chicken salad with celery and sweet onion and just a touch of smoked paprika.

Verdict: Yum.

Day 3 continued: Through the entire mostly de-meated carcass of the bird (bones, but not the skin) into a pot of water and cook it out until you have a nice broth. Get what little bitty bits of the meat that you can off the bones. Chuck the bones, let the remaining lot chill in the fridge and skim the fat off the top. Reheat, add veggies (a potato, a carrot, some onion, a few green beans, happened to have some ginger, so let's see how that works w/ the flavors already baked into the bird) and finish up the cooking.

Verdict: Not bad and sort of comforting in the way home-made chicken soup would be. Skip the ginger next time. A decent experiment, but not a good fit.

I have to say my verdicts are increasingly dropping in gusto, but I'm still in the survivable mode here. Better than my college days living off of jar-sauce pasta and black beans and rice.

Meanwhile, my moneyed friends bought a deep fryer and made carrot chips dusted with salt and just a touch of smoked paprika, which ranks right up there among the tastiest fried things I've ever eaten. We decided it's the best vegan bacon substitute there could ever be, you know, if you like that kind of thing. Smoked paprika is a gift from the gods. Deep fryers, a gift from the devil. I love the political perks of the corporeal life. Always someone trying to win you over.

why am I not writing?

Subtitle "Why am I whining instead of doing something?"

So I've had these bits and pieces of stories that I think are A story waiting to come together and I can't seem to get re-started. Prior to "the bad spring/summer" when work ate every aspect of my life for several months, I had started in on something and was feeling pretty good about it. It was a shitty first draft, but a shitty first draft is the first step on the road to...successively less shitty drafts. If you're a good girl and very patient and keep drafting and eat all your vegetables, you might even end up with something readable in the end. It can happen.

Anyway, it was going to be a challenge. All I had was an image, and that always means the story is going to progress a bit more slowly until the characters start to show their personalities and motivations and situations. Something about a woman who missed her ghost. She'd only just realized it was gone, that she'd neglected it, that she couldn't seem to find it. (Okay, there are obvious psychoanalytic connections here w/ me and my muse or whatever. Nonetheless, something about it feels good and right and I swear by all that is good and holy not to write directly about my own life. Far too boring...).

I started to get the character before work came in with its gaping maw, but haven't been able to go back to the story since. Then a couple of weeks ago, I just got the sense that this story was about betrayal. Self-betrayal? Betrayal of others? Usually the two go hand in hand. So now that's simmering in the back of my head. Goes w/ the ghost image I had. There's an obvious betrayal there. (Stop squirming, you psychoanalysts in the audience. I see it. I do.)

So I think I'm ready to start writing again now. It's funny, and perhaps reasonable, that 5 to 6 months of having to work serious overtime might burn you out and turn you into a couch potato--more like a slightly burned, bitter-tasting hash brown, really--for a few months. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself on that front. Anyway, I think it's time. My loyalty to work has been, um, challenged lately, and it's time to be loyal to myself again. I've been serving a fickle master for too long. So instead I'll follow my own interests a bit more aggressively for a little while.

Much less fickle. Mmm.