Despite all my best intentions, I haven’t updated this thing since mid-March. And the longer I go between updates, the easier it is to not update at all. So on today’s to-do list? Update the goddamned blog, already.

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In late March, I noticed that Nate, one of my cats, had suddenly lost a lot of weight. I noticed this on a Wednesday, and decided it was time to get him in for a long-overdue vet appointment. But he seemed fine otherwise, so I didn’t consider it urgent. In fact, I procrastinated about it, and the next thing I knew it was Saturday afternoon and the vet was closed and I still hadn’t made an appointment.

By Saturday afternoon, I noticed Nate was drinking an awful lot of water. He seemed to spend much of his time at the water bowl, as if he was obsessed with it.

Okay, I thought, we’re definitely going in on Monday.

But by Saturday evening, it was obvious (even to my thick-headed self) that something was seriously wrong. Nate had no interest in food; he kept vomiting small amounts of a brownish froth; and while he sat hunched over the water bowl, he no longer seemed to have an interest in drinking. He also had a very hard time climbing the stairs. I kept a close eye on him, by then certain that we were going to have to make a trip to the emergency vet.

And then he sat by the back door, as if he wanted to go out, and started howling–long, drawn-out, desperate yowls. When I approached him he was fixated on the door, as if he wanted out, but when I tried to get his attention I realized that he was disoriented. He just was not himself at all.

Less than 15 minutes later, we were at the emergency vets’; it would be a full week before Nate left. He spent that entire week on IV fluids, and it wasn’t until late on Day 4 that anyone started making cautiously optimistic noises about my taking him home. Had I waited much longer to take him in, he probably would not have made it; that he did, given his condition, still amazes me.

Nate, as it turned out, was in full-blown kidney failure. Slowly, bit by bit, he had lost kidney function, and by late March, when he finally “crashed,” he had less than 15-20% function left. Right now, he has even less than that; I just assume that he has no kidney function left at all. So my job, these days, is to be his kidneys for him.

Every single day, I give him 200ml of subcutaneous fluids. I’ve had to get over my horror of needles, and learn how to stick them into my cat without freaking out–and I’ve succeeded at that. It’s strange to think back to how terrified I was at first, and how much anxiety I felt when Nate didn’t want to cooperate. It really was difficult at first; I had to learn how to dose him, and he had to get used to my doing so. I can’t tell you how many nights I spent working up the nerve to administer his fluids, only to have him get annoyed and refuse to hold still. I was supposed to get 150-180 ml into him per day, but on a good day I was getting maybe 80 in. On a bad day, I got nothing into him at all. And we had far more bad days than good ones.

It’s not coincidental that, in late April, I suddenly decided that I wanted to try my hand at having houseplants. The desire seemed to come out of the blue; after killing a few plants with neglect back in my art school days I decided I had a black thumb and never bothered with plants again. But in April and May of this year I went on a prolonged houseplant-buying spree, and it wasn’t until early June that it finally hit me–here were life forms that depended on me for the regular application of life-sustaining fluids, were they to survive. And, unlike the feline life form who depended upon me for the regular application of life-sustaining fluids, houseplants would hold still and let me take care of them.

It wasn’t until late July that Nate and I finally worked out a system for giving him his full dose of fluids every day. Until we did, Nate had his ups and downs, feeling good on some days (when I had managed to get fluids into him) and lousy on others (when I hadn’t). Every day, I struggled with knowing that I was doing my best, but it wasn’t anywhere near good enough. That Nate has other medical conditions both complicating his CRF, and in addition to it, didn’t help. He has kidney stones (the wicked, tiny kind that are inoperable–and thus fatal–when they cause a blockage). He has hip dysplasia, and resulting severe arthritis (his hips, on X-ray, were the most godawful-raggedy things I’ve ever seen). He’s always had rumbly guts and chronic diarrhea, with no identifiable cause.  And he has a mass in his liver, that, based on lab results (because I’m not putting him through a biopsy), my vet believes is malignant.

Oh, and to add insult to injury? He endured a nasty little visit to the e-vet’s due to impacted anal glands (trust me, you don’t want the details).

The poor guy! I sometimes think I ought to change his name to Murphy, because it seems that whatever can go wrong with a cat will go wrong with him. He’s only 9 years old, but he’s such a wreck; one of my new nicknames for him is Dead Cat Walking.

Despite all of this, however, Nate is doing very well. You wouldn’t know he was a sick cat, just to look at him. He’s gained some weight back, and while he’s not as energetic as he used to be he’s active, and seems very happy. He eats well, his eyes are bright and his coat is healthy, he’s his usual chatty self. He seeks me out for attention and laptime, and occasionally still wrestles with his best buddy, Mr. Steve. I give him Buprenorphine for his arthritis pain, and that seems to help him a lot (though I still cringe whenever he decides to jump the back fence).  He had an ultrasound while at the emergency vets’, and for the longest time the shaved area on his belly stayed naked pink. But now that he’s getting fluids every day his body has decided it finally has the resources to devote to growing hair back. He’s not throwing up, or showing signs of the usual acid stomach that CRF cats are prone to; I haven’t had to give him Pepcid since late July. He hasn’t been back to the vet since July 19th, and while he’s about due for labwork just to see if anything has changed, he’s had no other reason to go.

So I’m doing a pretty good job at being Nate’s kidneys, if I do say so myself. I don’t know which of his panoply of afflictions is finally going to get him in the end, but right now I don’t feel the overwhelming sense of powerlessness and impending failure that I felt between the end of March and the end of July.  Dead Cat Walking is coming up on seven months since he crashed, and that’s seven extra months I never expected to get with him, back when I was paying Nate nightly visits at the emergency vet’s. And while it’s been a huge adjustment (especially for someone like me, who is notoriously poor at dealing with others’ neediness and dependency), the whole experience has taught me surprising things about myself, and what I am capable of doing. But that’s another whole blog post, right there–for now I’ll content myself with getting this one posted.

For what it’s worth, I’m now on Twitter. And while it’s fun, and is the perfect blogging solution for the attention-impaired, I’m already annoyed at it because half of the tweets I left today have disappeared.  I’ve made 35 updates so far, and only 18 are visible. Other people seem to be having this problem too, so I’ll continue to use it for a while and see if the issue gets resolved. If it doesn’t, screw it–I’ve plenty of other time-sinks at my disposal.

I realized today that I have at least half a dozen paintings in the works that have all ended up falling by the wayside and left unfinished as I move on to other things.  I’m pretty far along on all of them, and all of them are looking good and definitely worth finishing. But I keep jumping along to the next project, thinking that I will come back and finish the first one later, or that I can move back and forth between multiple projects simultaneously, and it hasn’t been working out that way.

And it doesn’t feel like boredom, either. I know what it’s like to get to a certain point with a painting and realize that I no longer give a damn about it, no matter how well it’s coming along. I like each of these pieces, and want to finish them, and I strongly believe that I actually will finish them. But for now it’s a little frustrating to realize that I’ve been doing a lot of painting and have nothing of consequence actually done.

On the other hand, the fact that I’ve been painting at all, and painting nearly every single day, is a big deal. Given the choice of making lots of half-finished paintings and sitting in my studio staring at a blank canvas, unable to make that first mark, I’ll definitely take this.

The most recent one I’ve stalled out on is a copy of Frederick Leighton’s Biondina that I took on as part of a monthly challenge on the WetCanvas portraiture forum.  I liked the softness of her face, and since my paintings all tend to have a rather hard look to them I thought I could pick up a few pointers by making a copy. And I’ve managed to get just a little bit further along than this:

I’m happy with what I’ve got. It’s looking good so far. But it’s looked pretty much like this for ten days now, sitting untouched on my small desktop easel while I’ve gone off working on other things. I do have a deadline; I’m supposed to have her done by the end of this month, but it isn’t a hard deadline, and if I failed to meet it at all I doubt anyone would notice.

So I have lots of creative energy flowing right now; more than I have in years. And I am productive after a fashion, which makes me feel good. Only I’m not really productive at all–I haven’t much to show for all this activity–and that’s been nagging at me for a while.

I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with this.

Maybe finishing Biondina would be a good start.

Okay, I admit it–I’m sort of a slob. I live alone, and thus can do things like eat my hastily-thrown-together dinner out of a bowl while sitting in front of the computer.  That’s what I did Saturday evening, in fact. And after finishing my dinner, I occupied myself with other tasks, leaving the bowl on my desk.

I went into the kitchen to put water on to boil for coffee, and let Sophie–who was waiting impatiently outside the back door–in. Her brother Max followed; he raced past her and headed upstairs without so much as a “Hey, ’sup?” while Sophie hung around, wanting food and attention.

Coffee made and Princess Kitty adored, I decided to go upstairs and check email before doing other things. And here’s the sight I beheld upon entering the office:

YES, THAT’S A RAT. A RAT IN MY BOWL. (And yes, my desk is a mess. Shut up.)

That’s why Max was in such a hurry to get upstairs.

Max is a cat with a mind of his own. He’s like a pushy little dude in a black cat suit, and can be really obnoxious sometimes. But he’s also totally food-motivated. Food is his weak spot. So if I want him to do something (like come inside, or come out from wherever he’s hiding), and he’s being a little shit,  I just offer food; it’s that easy. Sophie and Nate want to be petted and loved, Max wants treats.

He’s also a little beggar, always wanting to know what I’m eating. Every time I sit down to eat, he’s at my side, wondering, “What’s that? Can I have some?” He’ll reach up with his paw and grab my arm, trying to pull it down so he can see what’s in the bowl. (Thought to give him credit, once he knows it’s something he doesn’t want, he leaves me alone.)

So, as you can see, he knows exactly what a bowl is for, and he put my bowl to its proper use. And while my first reaction was something like, “What the hell?” I have to admit I was impressed. And amused. I sat at my desk laughing helplessly for a good five minutes before I went for the camera.

As for Max, when asked about it, he seemed extremely pleased with himself:

He reached out with one paw and swatted at the rat in the bowl (but I was laughing too hard to get a picture). Then he flopped over and wanted his belly rubbed, purring like mad and obviously a very happy cat. So I rubbed his belly and told him what a good boy he was, and thanked him for bringing me a fresh, tasty rodent (and such a big one, too!) before slipping outside to bury the poor thing in the compost pile.

On a more positive note, I’ve made arrangements to go back to San Francisco for a week in July. It is my fervent desire to spend that week finding and purchasing LOLCat Manor v.3.0, but even if the timing isn’t right for that to come to pass, I’m looking forward to the trip.

This time, I’m going to stay in a hostel. Part of that decision is because I’m cheap, but the other reason is that I would like to be able to go do things with other people, even if it’s just going to a movie together one night, or doing something touristy like the Japanese Tea Garden. I’m also pretty well reacquainted with getting around SF and the Bay Area, and up for trying new places to eat, so getting to share a bit of local knowledge and do something new with other people could be fun. Plus, I hardly spent any time at all in my hotel room on my last visit, and can see no point at all in spending crazy tourist-season rates for the perfunctory use of a shower and a mattress.

Besides–if, after four or five nights in a hostel I am sick to death of it, I can always go get myself a quiet, luxurious room at a fine hotel for the remainder of my stay.

And while I try not to live completely sealed inside my Magical Realist Bubble of Self-Absorption, I admit to being a bit surprised at how easy it was to get my reservation at the hostel. Last February, as I was weighing summer travel plans, many of the hostels I considered staying at (in both Vancouver and San Francisco), were either already fully booked, or I could only reserve a bed for part of my stay. This time? No problem at all.  And I shouldn’t be surprised at that, given the state of the economy and the way people are cutting back on unnecessary spending, but I still had that “Oh, wow–” moment.

The City of Seattle, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to include kitchen and yard waste pickup along with regular trash collection. For no additional fee, you get a little 13-gallon wheelie bin; if you need a larger container you have to pay for it. It’s pretty clear what is allowed in the kitchen waste bins and what isn’t, and while the guy next door’s been bitching to all who will listen about how it wasn’t put up for a vote, I’m all for it.

The city delivered the free bins to each house in my neighborhood earlier this week; actual pickup of kitchen wastes doesn’t start until March 3oth. But I realized right away that since the bin is  so compact, there’s no reason not to put mine where it will actually get used–in the kitchen, by the back door.

But as I looked at it more closely, I realized there is another reason to keep it inside, one that doesn’t seem to have entered the minds of whoever chose the bins: there is no latch, or some other built-in way to keep the lid shut. And the bin itself is only about two feet tall. That means it poses no challenge whatsoever to an adult raccoon, or even a good-sized dog. Short of setting a cinderblock on the lid, there is no way to keep the bin outside without it turning into a supersized to-go container for the ring-tailed hoodlums that roam my neighborhood.

So I can see it now: another trash day dawns, and the alley is full of little green bins, all tipped over and spilling coffee grounds, orange peels, and eggshells everywhere. The crows and squirrels are duking it out for the best stuff; they already do it now atop overstuffed garbage bins, but thanks to the raccoons the pickings will now be even better (and the alley–already seedy-looking–will be even trashier).

I probably wouldn’t have thought of this–or been so annoyed by it–had I not spent the last five years here keeping urban wildlife at bay. The squirrels and crows can be troublesome, the rats are a constant bother, but it’s the possums, and especially the raccoons that have given me the most headaches since I moved here. I used to think raccoons were cute, but after dealing with the little bastards firsthand? I’m so over that.

I’ve intentionally structured my life in such a way that I almost never have to drive anywhere. I live in an urban neighborhood, within walking distance of stores, the post office, and bus lines to anywhere else in the city. I’m self-employed, and thus my commute involves getting out of bed, going downstairs to make coffee, and coming back upstairs to work. I usually only take the car out once a month, to do all of my “big shopping” in one trip.

And I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love this arrangement. Having grown up in the worst sort of Southern California suburban hell, and later having lived in a small city where I still had to drive to get to everything, not being car-dependent has been a liberating experience. When I was in the Bay Area last month I was excited at how much public transit had expanded and improved since I last lived there; getting around was so much easier than I remember it being 15 years ago (I didn’t have to wait an hour or more for the 26 Valencia! Amazing!) that I’ve actually given thought to going car-free when I move back.

But for now, I’m still among the wheeled, and today I decided to go wild and drive all the way to Renton (ooooh!) and go to Ikea.

(Okay, actually, I had to go to Ikea, because all the little pegs that hold my bookshelves up? Are missing. They are in a Zip-Loc bag somewhere, but where? Hell if I know. But now that I’ve bought replacements, I am sure to find them.)

All I intended to buy were those pegs, but hey! They had the work table I’ve been long-thinking about buying, and it was on closeout–down to $69 from $129.  Just last night I was in my studio, thinking, “I really could use a new work table in here…” and now I’ve got it.

I ran a lot of other errands, and then as I was headed home on I-5 got an unambiguous message: “Go to Goodwill.” (And when I say “message,” I mean “voice in my head,” speaking loud and clear. Yes, do I hear voices in my head. Yes, I do what the voices tell me to do. No, I’m not crazy–not if we’re judging by the results of doing what the voices tell me to.)

I don’t normally go to Goodwill or other thrift stores, these days. I used to shop there a lot when I didn’t have much money, but as I’ve become more prosperous, and my self-concept has changed, I’ve grown pickier about clothes and self-presentation and–perhaps most importantly–how I’m going to spend my time. And spending hours digging through racks of clothes in hope of finding bargains isn’t as profitable a use of my time as it used to be. But having been told to go, I did. Why not? I wasn’t in a hurry and didn’t have to be anywhere.

Besides, the last time I followed the prompt and went I scored a very nice vintage Singer sewing machine just like I’d wanted, in perfect working order, for $17.50.  (Her name is Maud, which means “mighty in battle.”) Oh, and an orange merino sweater that still had Nordstrom tags on it, that is my current favorite. So who am I to argue? I just do what the voices tell me.

Anyway, I scored. I’d been meaning to buy a new jacket for months, and my t-shirts have been getting ratty, and I promised my mom a few weeks ago (after buying the Singer) that I’d keep an eye out for another vintage workhorse machine in good condition. And for $50 I got a really cool anorak (that my 16-year-old mod-punk hybrid self would have killed for), eight t-shirts, and the sewing machine.

The sewing machine had a pink tag, so just for today it was $1.29. It’s a Dressmaker–some weird brand that I can find almost no information about, and no pictures of this particular model (and I can’t even find a model number on it). My best guess is that it was built in the ’50s, maybe even the early ’60s. The lid for the carrying case is missing in action, and the base is shot to hell. But it’s a well-built little machine with nice, smooth action, and once I got it home I realized that mechanically it’s pretty much a clone of the Singer I bought. Better yet, it still has the bobbin case, so I don’t have to try tracking down parts for this Mystery Machine. It also takes Singer needles just fine.

And for $1.29? See, kids, this is why I listen to the voices in my head.

I’ll clean it up and oil it and give it some minor adjustments, and once I’m sure everything’s working correctly I’ll offer it to my mom. Several years ago, she paid over $1200 for a very nice, very complicated machine with programmable stitches and al kinds of extra features on it–none of which she ever uses. And most of her sewing is upholstery and home decor, which is too heavy-duty for her current machine. So I think she’ll be very happy with this one, and knowing her she’ll be absolutely thrilled that I only spent $1.29 on it (because my mom’s even crazier for a good bargain than me).

At any rate, that was my big adventure for the day; I made it home just as it started to sleet (which was great–I hate driving in that stuff), and now I’m going to go downstairs and clear space for my new work table so I can put it together.

Had a dream last night.

(Yeah, I know, people talking about their dreams is like people talking about their pets or children or golf game–99% of the time it is of absolutely zero interest to anyone but the speaker. But I’m not going to let that stop me.)

Anyway, in said dream I was trying to sell a friend of mine on a new concept for a restaurant: the Swine Bar.

“You know, like a wine bar–only instead of wine we’d serve nothing but pork, prepared in a multitude of tasty, tasty ways. We’d do charcuterie. We’d roast a pig in a pit out back. We’d serve carnitas. And just think of what we could do with bacon! We’d serve it all tapas-style, in small portions, so you could have your piggy served up in several different ways if you wanted to. It would be like Mecca* for Tony Bourdain; you just know it.”

My friend gave me an exasperated look. “You do know I’m Jewish, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I replied, “but that’s okay. That means only one of us will be eating up all the profits.”

[...]

Now, I have no interest whatsoever in going into the restaurant business. Not even the prospect of unlimited quantities of skillfully-prepared pig parts can get me excited about it. But if anyone wants to go ahead and open their own Swine Bar? Look for me on opening night; no matter what I have to do, I’ll be there.

—–

*And now that I’m back in my waking life and typing that sentence, I realize that comparing my dream-shrine to pigmeat to Mecca (Mecca!) is probably one of the worst comparisons I could have made. So I offer my sincerest apologies to any Muslims who have stumbled across this. I have this unfortunate habit of embarrassing myself, and it obviously doesn’t go away when I go to sleep.

January kicked my ass (not necessarily a bad thing, mind you). Then it somehow slipped away, and now I’m a week into February, looking up and saying, “Oh, hell–is it the seventh already?”

I won’t bore you with the details, but the highlight of last month was spending a few days in San Francisco, roaming around and looking at neighborhoods I thought I might want to live in. And I did find the neighborhood, and now it’s just a matter of finding the house.  (And yes, of course, there has to be some means of paying for it, but…oh, I’ll figure that out eventually. I have months yet.)

The Yes Project ended up derailed, not for lack of inspiration, but rather for the exact opposite. It started out as a silly project, with low expectations on my part, and then blew up into something far bigger than I ever could have imagined. All of a sudden, I had ideas flowing in for new images at an incredible rate. Most of them were far more challenging conceptually than anything I’d anticipated. I went around with my head buzzing with ideas; it was as if I’d touched some sort of creative live wire.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t compatible with making an image every single day. Maybe one a week; that could work. But in trying to keep up with the sudden torrent, I nearly drowned.

So now that I’m long since dried off, and have realized I’m still interested in the project, and still want to paint these pictures in my head, I’m still going to do it. It’s just going to be at a much slower pace. (I’m sure my vast readership–all three of you–will understand. [laughs])

But before I do any more painting, I absolutely have to get my studio cleaned up. Part of what hindered me in making images for the Yes Project was that I was fighting clutter left and right, never able to find anything, never having adequate space to work. The room that houses my studio is huge–13 x 27′–but in addition to being my studio it has also served as large-scale version of the kitchen junk drawer for the last five years. If I had something I didn’t know what to do with, I shoved it in the studio. Which worked just fine as long as I wasn’t making art, but right now? It sucks. It’s nearly impossible to move in there, much less paint.

The first problem I decided to take on was getting all the stray canvases, canvas panels, and sheets of paper off the floor and onto some sort of stand. But after checking out the prices for canvas racks, I decided I was better off making something myself. So that’s what I’ve been up to this week, turning some leftover Ikea ‘Ivar’ shelving into studio storage. It’s working out better than I had hoped–I’m already thinking about adding on to it–and I’ll have photos in the next few days.

In the meantime, I think the latest coat of paint must be dry, so I’m back to work…

My ukulele finally arrived yesterday. It is no longer experiencing an exception, in UPS-speak.

And it’s lovely, and I’m very happy with it, and my fingertips are already very tender from trying to play it.

The cats are enthralled. All I have to do is start fumbling around with it, and I have an attentive feline audience. But I’m a long way from playing on streetcorners; despite having great manual dexterity, there are some things these hands are not accustomed to doing, and fingering chords is one of them.

Developing the muscle memory is going to take a while, but that’s okay; I’m in no hurry. By now I know that every time I learn a new skill like this, I have to keep plugging away at it diligently, day by day. Progress is slow for a while. But then comes the day when all of a sudden my body knows exactly what to do, and I no longer have to think about it. And eventually I get to the point where I can’t think about it, or my body locks up and forgets how to do it. (While at a stoplight today, I made the mistake of thinking about how to work the clutch–bad idea. I stalled out twice before I managed to not-think about it again.)

Besides, learning to play the ukulele well enough to not embarrass myself is only part of this. It’s not just about teaching my fingers to do something new, or creating a different sort of social life; it’s about rewiring part of my brain, too. Every time you learn a new and somewhat-difficult skill, your brain changes. New neural connections form. It doesn’t matter whether it’s dancing or sudoku or tennis or speaking a new language; giving your brain a vigorous workout is a good thing. And I admit I’m curious to see how plonking around on the ukulele, and learning to think like a musician, will change the way I think as a writer, a visual artist, and in other areas of my life. What other connections will be made?

Between pouring rain and snowmelt following the Christmas storms, western Washington State is a mess.

Seattle, at the moment, is an island. Both I-5 and I-90, the major freeways into the Puget Sound region, have been shut down, and probably will not re-open until Saturday or Sunday. Long stretches of I-5 are under floodwaters, and I-90 over the Snoqualmie Pass has been closed due to mud/rock slides and avalanches.

And somewhere out there is my poor ukulele, stranded on a UPS truck. It made it to Portland, according to UPS’s tracking information, and then–get this–it “experienced an exception.”

Your package has experienced an exception.

I shit you not–that’s the exact phrase UPS uses instead of the clearer and more concise “Your package has been delayed.”

Which makes me want to start using “experienced an exception” in everyday converstion simply because it’s so ludicrous. Maybe I’ll leave a voicemail message for my mother tomorrow:  “Hi Mom, sorry I haven’t called, but I’ve been experiencing an exception.” (Which pretty much guarantees that she’ll call back and ask, “Are you on drugs again?”)

At any rate, I’m disappointed. I was so sure I would have it by yesterday (Thursday) afternoon, and thus get to spend the entire weekend annoying the cats with a constant barrage of atonal plinking noises–but alas, it is not to be.  Instead, I’m going to go buy a new scanner and clean up my lightly-flooded basement, and continue work on the Yes Project, and think about how nice it will be when I move back to San Francisco (in part because it doesn’t rain all the goddamned time there).