Had set myself unavailable to CSz this weekend long before I knew I’d be absent for all of June. I’ve promised Fuzzy, you see, that I’d reserve a couple weekend nights a month just for us, and really, I’m glad I did, because I was feeling burnt out and now I’m feeling excited again.

Today (Saturday), we slept late, puttered on computers, spent $115 at LoneStar Comics most of which was for ME. Wait. What?

Well, see, I’m still hooked on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Comic, and I gave my unread copy to Ms. Eclectic because there was only one copy that day and I’d read it in MN, and so we went there to buy a replacement for me so I have a complete set.

And there was the Buffy year one comic book omnibus and I had to have it, and then there was the Harry Potter display and the Slytherin scarf was calling to me, and then there was this game (Ticket to Ride) that we’d been itching to try, and…well…Fuzzy got a book TOO.

We also went to Don Pablos where I had carnitas because the picture was drool-worthy, and this woman at the next table gave us a $5 off coupon because she had extras and they were about to expire. (The carnitas were delicious. I ignored the rice and had steamed veggies instead of beans, and ended up forgoing the tortillas, and just eating it all with a fork.)

And then Starbucks.

Then we came home for more puter-ing and puttering. And I wrote another chapter of my STTNG fanfic that has been on-hold since October-ish. You can read it here (chapter four is what I wrote tonight) or here or here, if you’re so inclined.

And now? Now it’s bedtime.

A bullet point post.

Work:
Wrote two articles.
Talked to a couple of prospective employees, but they didn’t really spark anything.

Dogs:
Zorro vomited all over my office.
Cleo removed two feet of carpeting from the back hallway.
If only they weren’t so cute and cuddly the REST of the time.

Other:
Claimed another domain.
Went to Studio Movie Grill in Arlington for dinner and to see Transformers.
Enjoyed both

Bed Now

Thirteen Things about MissMeliss
13 things that begin with J

1. Jade: I have several pieces of jade – mala beads, earrings, etc – I love the way it always feels cool against my skin, and I like the tranquil green color.
2. Jaguar: Both the car and the cat – the former because I like speed and style, and this marque is known for both, the latter because they’re just so sinuous and sensuous and lethal.
3. Jalopy: I first encountered this word in a Hardy Boys novel when I was six or seven years old, and I loved the way it rolls off the tongue. Now, I also love the romantic vision of piling in an old car for a beachward road trip.
4. Jazz: There’s freedom to play in jazz that other forms of music just don’t have, and there’s also such a rich history of this uniquely American musical form. And my love of it has nothing to do with my secret celebrity crush on Harry Connick, Jr, either. Really.
5. Jellyfish: I used to be afraid of them, when I was a little girl swimming at Ocean Grove or Sandy Hook and my mother would sweep her arm in the water and send them adrift, without ever touching them, but then I saw the jellies exhibit at the Montery Bay Aquarium, and I realized how very magical they are. Alien, but beautiful.
6. Jetes: When I was very young, and enrolled in ballet classes, I learned that the most fun in the world, dance wise, is the jete. Those giant deer-like leaps across the stage are so much like flying.
7. Jetty: At many of the beaches I spent time on as a kid there were long jetties of slate colored rock, slimy with algae and partly covered in sand and seagulls, and often smelling as much of tar as anything else…I always wanted to go the end and feel the spray of the breakers in my face, but of course I was never allowed.
8. Jewelry: I’ve always liked dangly earrings, but it’s only in the past few years that I’ve really started to collect jewelry. A lot of what I have now comes from designers like she who goes by EvilAri on LiveJournal, and by Lucia whose work I fell in love with at a renaissance faire a few years ago. I like funky, original pieces more than shiny nice-lady stuff.
9. Jolan tru: It’s no secret I’m a Trekkie. Or Trekker. Whatever. This phrase is essentially the Romulan equivalent of the Italian ciao or the Hawaiian aloha, and is defined as meaning “Good day” or “Good night” in the Romulan dictionary.
10. Journal: I like blank notebooks themselves, as well as the act of keeping a personal journal. I prefer journals to diaries, as journals imply more adventure, exploration, and narrative. I also like reading published journals. Madeleine L’Engle’s Crosswicks quartet is a personal favorite.
11. Juggling: I don’t know how to juggle – I’ve tried, but never very seriously – but it’s a skill that fascinates me to know end. I have great admiration for jugglers and jesters.
12. Jukeboxes: Pop in a few quarters (nickels in the old old ones) and push a few buttons, and out comes music. When my college friends and I used to visit Mel’s Drive-in on weekends, we had a regular set-list of oldies we used to try and play in order.
13. Jump-ropes: My grandfather used to make mine out of nylon cording, and he’d melt the ends on the gas stove so they wouldn’t fray. I loved them, and would spend hours on the front porch, or skipping rope up and down the driveway, often with my friends. Innocent fun. A fellow blogger mentioned jumping rope recently, and I’m keen to have one again.

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We spent most of the day in bed, sleeping and cuddling the dogs, alternately reading and chatting. It’s the way we often spend Sundays, and today was much like another Sunday.

Eventually we decided we ought to do something fun, and thought to check out the new Studio Movie Grill in Arlington, but, alas, everything we wanted to see was sold out at the time we went there, so we trekked over to Cedar Hill because we don’t like the movie theaters in our immediate neighborhood, and saw Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which was fun enough for a summer movie. I was, I confess, far more intrigued by the trailer for The Golden Compass that ran ahead of it. Well, first we went to dinner, and then we saw the movie, but dinner’s dinner, you know?

On the way home, as twilight blended into full darkness, we enjoyed seeing fireworks over the lake and over the hills in all directions, and playing “spot the fireworks” amused us slightly.

We stopped at Starbucks, and Blockbuster, and I came home with The Mistress of Spices and A Good Year, as well as some werewolf movie Fuzzy liked the sound of.

I fed the dogs while Fuzzy went to Taco Bell, because by this time we were hungry again, and we got home in time to catch the last 90 minutes or so of 1776. Fuzzy had never seen it before, I love it, and for some reason, I’d never connected that the infamous Ben Franklin “essential liberty” quotation is used in the movie before tonight.

I am now doing laundry and watching season one of West Wing, which seems an appropriate ending to Independence Day, even if it is now technically the fifth.

(Click to enlarge)

Sickness, storms, and state-lines are the three things that will define June 2007 for me. I still have the faintest cough, but only when I’m overtired, underhydrated, or stressed.

The dogs have mostly forgiven us for our absence – I think they actually enjoy the kennel, as there are dogs to play with and strangers to flirt with – but I know they’re happiest at home, and I’m happiest with my furry companions cuddled against me while I write.

Our property, our town, are not in any flooded areas, and yet, there’s so much rain that even I, who generally revel in storms, have become tired of rain. Even so, there were a couple thunder-cracks tonight that startled me and frightened my dogs. Poor puppies.

I’ve been to a bookstore for the first time in months, and have finished Ann “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” Brashares’s general fiction novel The Last Summer (of You and Me) which was beachy and lyrical in exactly the right ways for this time of year, and while there were sad events the overall tone was hopeful. Formal review will be on Bibliotica within a few days.

I have much to share, but no real urge to write it just now. I’m tired, I just feel tired, and all I want to do is sleep and read, and yet, I’m not drowning in weariness or anything, I’m surfacing.

We never did stop in Marshalltown, IA, despite the offer of a free place to crash and a game of Scotland Yard against Flavia the Swiss foreign exchange student, opting instead to spend Wednesday evening curled up on the soft comfy couches at Ben and Julia’s cuddling their beagles and chatting with Ben (as Jules was out of town for work).

It was relaxing, but there were silly moments, and it’s good to have friends you share in-jokes with, and who can invite themselves into your home, just as you invited yourself into theirs.

(Speaking of the beagles, Molly and Daisy are cuter than I ever imagined, and while they completely suck at coming when called, they do get in their kennel when told, so it’s all good. I did note, however, that calling “Beagles!” worked better than either name.)

In any case, we left Minneapolis around 10 yesterday morning, stopped at Caribou Coffee, and then finally crashed for the night at a faded but functional Ramada in Oklahoma City. We’re so close to home we can taste it, but it was late, and we were tired and crabby, and we’re about to go eat free food.

The plan is to retrieve the dogs from the vet, and then go home and sleep for a long long long long time.

ATTN: CARYNSILVER: Have fallen in love with the game “Valley of the Pharoahs” do you know it?

I’ve been enjoying hanging out with my cousins, some of whom I’ve never met before, and it was good to see Aunt Peg look so happy. Last night at her birthday dinner everyone was misty. Her great-grandchildren all gave her gag-gifts, and by the end of the evening she looked like a well-loved version of Maxine (from the greeting cards), with pink plastic birthday sunglasses, and a birthday tiara worn over her birthday straw hat, and a joke ear horn. She’s such a good sport, and seriously, she looks 75, not 90.

She says she’s “beginning to feel old now.”

During dinner there were phone calls from friends and family who couldn’t make it here, and that was touching as well.

Today we are splitting our time between brunch with my family and the afternoon with Fuzzy’s family, and then tomorrow we’re leading my parents to Minneapolis to see Ira’s daughter.

I’m still not able to shake this cough, but I feel mostly better, though I barely slept last night. I’m in that, “I really wanna be home now” stage, but still enjoying myself, for the most part.

I miss my dogs.

While I generally think (and share with most people I meet) Oklahoma is a bleak and depressing stretch of land to have to drive through, today we found that there are some cool spots there, nevertheless.

We’d seen billboards for miles advertising a wild animal refuge, but we didn’t really pay attention. Until we got to exit 64 and Fuzzy said, “Wanna see the tigers?” I never even seriously considered going. But hey, the man loves big cats, and I like them too, so we went. We spent $18 (2 adult tickets plus a bag of food “for any of the monkeys and bears with pvc pipes, and the geese), and we spent a good 2 hours wandering around the GW Exotic Animal Refuge, coming two feet from lions, tigers, lemurs, wolves, chimps, baboons, cougars and bears. The bears and monkeys with feeding tubes were eager to play – tapping on the pipes for “more” or flirting with us. We used half the bag of sweet cereal on them, then wandered back to see the wolf hybrids (half-dog pets who were taken after they ate a Pekingese dog – owners were given the option of death or refuge. The geese were milling around near the enclosure where the goats and deer and sheep where hanging out, and they pretty much demanded the rest of the bag, following us and chittering loudly. One was injured in the wild and is missing half his top bill, and we gave him extra – he had to turn his head sideways to retrieve it.

The lions and tigers were very cool too – so many – mostly male. We’ve made plans to visit again when it’s cooler.
Feeding the bear was the highlight of my day. She met my eyes, and basically kept saying, “more please” and tapping on the pipe the way my dog taps on my arm or leg when he wants more treat.

We’re now in El Dorado, KS, and it’s bedtime.

Night all.

1:37 AM CDT: Couldn’t sleep. Edited this to fix stupid link that went crazy. This is why I shouldn’t post when I’m tired.

I knew it was going to be a weird day when Miss Cleo came in from her morning business dragging a torn sleeve. I threw it away, assuming one of the neighbor-kids had torn a shirt and tossed the evidence over the fence. But then the thumping started. At first I didn’t think much of it, because those kids are ALWAYS playing basketball in the street that goes along the side of our house, and usually I smile and think how cool it is that our neighborhood is safe enough for kids to DO that.

Except, whatever was thumping didn’t have that hollow basketball sound, but seemed more solid. And the shrieking doesn’t sound all that playful.

Fuzzy just got back a few minutes ago from his pre-trip haircut, and he’s bleeding, and he ran into the house faster than you’d ever think a geek could run.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did they cut you with the razor?”

“She tried to kill me,” he said.

“Fuzz, I know you hate hair cuts, but…”

“No,” he said. “They’re all pale. You know, like goths or something. And they smell weird. And she did this with the blade of the scissors, on purpose.”

“Um, right…”

“No, really,” he’s dabbing his head and frantic – and stoic!boy is never frantic. “She said I probably have a nice brain. I think she wanted to eat it.”

I put together the sounds from this morning, and my husband’s tale, and I nod. “But you made it home, right? So we’re good, and you’re safe.” I pause, then add, “Please tell me you didn’t tip her?”

But he doesn’t answer. He’s busy with his nose buried in the fur on top of Miss Cleo’s head.

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