I really should...

do something useful, but I'm not feeling productive today. We took one of our basement kitties to the vet -- he's been having some issues and isn't feeling the thing lately -- and later I go back to La Maison de Chat Royale for the week, but now, I really don't feel like doing anything but surfing the internet for knitting patterns and new pictures of Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch (the two best English names evar.)

I suppose I could update my knitting project photos, and maybe take pictures of my stash to update my Ravelry stash pages, but that would require me to get up and do something suspiciously like work. My lungs hurt, my eyes hurt and in general I am just not in the working vein today, so I'm not sure how that will work out.

Meh. That's the word of today: Meh. Meeeeeeeeh. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Thanks, Mom.

Apparently, human grandchildren aren't the only ones she spoils, because guess who bought Yoda a toy mouse yesterday? A toy mouse that he took to playing with at two o'clock in the freakin' morning and yowled for an hour over??!?!?

Yeah. It was like that.

And today what do I find in Yoda's inbox?

Yet another fluffy mouse toy.

Because I really don't need the sleep. Oy.

And then I bought myself something.

A beaded bracelet, fair-traded from Guatemala.

I saw this several weeks ago when I went out of an evening with my friends. I wanted it then, but had no money. Today I mused I had more than ample spare lying around (it wasn't all that spendy) and decided to ride over to the fair-trade store, on the off chance it was still there. And lo! There it was!

Here's a close-up:

I can't believe no one bought this. It's just too perfect for words.

Oh, well. More for me!

The trials of photography.

Do you know how hard it is to get a cat to pose? Yoda isn't about the pimp swagger, which is sad because he really is very beautiful. I'll have to take my phone up to bed tonight -- he gets seriously adorable when he snuggles. And I guess it's awful cold on his paws lately, what with the weather change, because he's been all up in my face this past week. It's cute, and he's soft as a bunny, but it makes my eyes itch.

Ah, well. C'est la vie!

I was supposed to work today on my fiction stuff, but I've had the megrim today, in all meanings of the word. Between the headache, the aura and the exhaustion, I'm beyond it all. So I just gave up on the day earlier, had a lie down and just now got back up.

To get myself back in the saddle (although which saddle I mean I have no idea, nor do I know if the particular saddle is of any importance at all), I have decided to start a new knitting project. I think I'm going to frog the scarf I started with my Mochi Plus and go with the finger knit idea. I'm going to use one of the balls for a hat -- something with a tight band, so it sticks to my head, and a loose cap, so it doesn't smoosh my curls completely -- and the second will be a finger knit scarf. I want to make an infinity scarf out of finger knitting, and I have a cunning plan for connecting the top of my knitting to the bottom. I'm curious to see if the process will work as well as I think it might.

If it does, you all will be the first to know. Since I have precious little else to do and blogging, while technically a nonsense activity, I suppose, gives me a sense that I haven't completely wasted my day, I'll probably be blogging a little more often.

Oh, oh, oh, I knew I came on here for a reason! I want to pimp my favorite writer: M. R. James. It's the time of year (for me, I know Christmas is traditionally the time for ghost stories but they fit just as well in the October time, at the end of my year) to pull a compilation of his stories off the shelf and read them.

I had a realization when I started going through the foreword of my favorite edition of his tales (not all of them; I have them all, but this book is merely a selection of his 'best', if there could ever be a 'best of' when considering his stories) -- I love his writing. I love the way he uses words. In his own, slightly over-blown Victorian way, he's just as spare and elegant with language as Fitzgerald. There's the ornate style of the time, yes, but he's stripped it down a bit, heralding a more modern style of writing than was prevalent at the end of the 1800s.

When I work at finding my voice, I often find that I tend to write in that sort of high-British Boarding School voice -- because I love M. R. James and his style. I talk like that. And then I suppress it mightily, because too many people say that no one likes to read stories written in that voice anymore.

That makes me sad. It's a beautiful style, and I should be allowed to use it. Granted, it means I'll lose some of my American readers (if not all), but...eh.

I'm still working on it. Work in progress, so my thoughts are a bit disjointed (the migraine isn't helping, either.) What I'm trying to say is, writing in my own voice is fraught with tension for me -- it's unstylish, but when I try to write in the more active, American style voice (which I have, if only because it's how you have to write for AP) it comes across as tense because it's inauthentic.

I wonder what would happen if I just let my voice go to do what it wanted?

And go read some M. R. James. He's kick-ass fabulous. I mean it! 

Another one comes home.

I got something yesterday, again in a gift bag.

 I'm developing a complex about gift bags.

The nice people at my vet's office made me a gift to go along with the tin:

 An imprint of his massive, almost people-like paw. With two hearts and his name pressed into it, too. It's sweet and a little bit creepy all at the same time.

But just look at the size of that paw, people!

My thumb fits in the center pad and I've got ginormo-man-hands. I mean, I knew he was big, but if I'd known how big I might have been more cautious around him. He always seemed so contained. A little furry Max Cady in my home.

Anyway, I went shopping today and got something to help with the Little Loki:

Dental floss threaders. I can bead away to my heart's content. I know, I know, they're the wrong sort of threaders for beading, but I can make do for now. Until I can get back to the drug store and find the other sort, which won't be until tomorrow or later.

I have had a hard day -- which is odd, since I've not done as much as I'd planned, but the past few weeks have been very difficult for me so just about anything I do seems to take so much effort. I think I will pour myself a glass of hydrating fluids (no wine for me tonight, alas) and then I'm going to get a start on Little Loki. I've finished the last of the first three seasons of Supernatural on DVD which my friend loaned me when I visited her (addiction, I so haz it), so I haven't got anything to watch -- unless I want to re-watch my favorite episodes. In true 'me' fashion, I am a Trickster addict, and I've got all but his last (SOB!!!) appearance in the pile on top of my television. Hmmm. Knitting on a scarf dedicated to a trickster god while watching The Trickster kill Dean over and over and over.... Sounds fitting.

Oh, and for the record? Despite the whole Trickster fetish, I am totally a Dean girl. Not that I'd kick Sam out of bed for eating cookies and not sharing them, that b*stard, but one gets the feeling that Dean has slightly more imagination in the ways that count to a groupie, you know? Very Alpha, slightly aggro, but probably lots of fun over a long weekend.

I don't know as I'd keep him in my house for long, though. It'd be like having a large, muddy, hyper dog. With a gun collection to make the US army cry with envy. Hmmm, maybe not so much with the Dean girl thing.

Ok, ok, ok. He can come over, but he has to leave that duffle bag in the car. House rules.

Taking over.

Three days and she's already acting like she lives here.

That's my chair. Mine! Have I had access to it in the last three days? NO. And when I do manage to gain access, she stands on my person and meows at me as if I have to get up right away and go do something else for her.

Evil. She's evil.

I tried to knit for a while Friday, but with all the 'help' coming from this particular quarter, I got very little done. I wanted to try illusion knitting today, but it's already complicated enough with the two colors. Adding in the little white paws and pokey-pokey gray nose and I'd end up with a serious tangle.

She goes home tomorrow. Granted, I like her, but it will be a relief to be able to knit in my own chair in peace again!

A plague within this house.

Well, not literally the plague with the black buboes and fluid in the lungs, but certainly a plague. Of a sort. My mother caught a very nasty cold in mid January and only just stopped coughing like a consumption victim this week, then passed it on to my niece and nephew who recycled it, gave it a special 'tweenie-teen spin and gave it to me. I've felt a bit like I was wearing the lead apron they put on you at the dentist to take your x-rays all week--not only did I have the weight on my chest, but I've been tired from carrying it and greatly disinterested in doing anything. Not working, not knitting, not nothin'. So that's what I did. I got my federal tax return this week, so while it would have been smart to do the work, it wasn't absolutely necessary.

I'm very glad I didn't get my mother's version of the disease, though. Just watching her deal with it made me hurt. She's got some serious old lady cojones, you know? I'm such a weenie, if I'd caught her version of it I'd probably have lain on the couch all week, crying. She managed to not only get up and dressed each day, she went out to breakfast, took care of the children (hence their own tussle with illness) and clean the kitchen every evening. I'm so weak.

Before I fell ill, I decided to do something for myself I've wanted to do for a very long, long time.

I made myself a red velvet cake for Valentine's Day.

 It was nummilicious. I think next time I will use my brother's cake recipe (which I will have to wrestle from him), but stick to her icing. I actually think I'll just change my cream cheese frosting recipe to hers, period, for every application, reason and season. That stuff's da bomb. The marscarpone cheese just makes it, in my opinion.

In other news, I tried to get new photos of my cats. Yeah, good luck to me.

 Elvis does not know you, but he does not like you. Not one bit.

I did manage to get a few good shots.

 The only good picture I have of Yoda--he does not like cameras.

Very artsy, though, no?

Here's a halfway decent shot of Elvis.

Yes, I keep a waterproof sheet on my bed. Yoda has reflux.

Change my sheets once after a massive wet puke, shame on you....

But the shot below is an example of why I have trouble taking pictures of my cats:

They see the stupid camera come out, they flinch away as if the flash is battery acid. Yoda is particularly averse to the camera. I can't tell you how many pictures I have of Yoda, looking straight on to the camera with his eyes squeezed shut so hard it looks like I just poked him with a sharp stick.

Le sigh, and he has such pretty green eyes. You'll just have to trust me on that, but he does. They're a couple shades darker than Elvis', a lovely spring green turning to pale gold at the edges. I've never had a cat with green eyes before, I find them quite taking.

One day, Yoda. One day. I will get a picture of your eyes.

Busy, busy, busy.

I have been knitting and doing stuff, I promise, I just haven't been online to tell you about it. Mostly because I'm still not entirely over the whole labyrinthitis thing, partly because I'm up to no good, so to speak. Ok, ok, it's more like I'm doing a bit of authorized fanfiction, and it's taking a lot of time. I want to get it right, and it's so hard to know how to do so! Anyway, there's some other stuff I've been up to.

For firstly, I knitted a hat.

I was surprised to note the red yarn was self-striping--I just thought it was random. Huh. I frogged it twice, actually, and got tired of frogging it and just finished the damn thing already. Bastard yarn.

It's actually an inch shorter than it was supposed to be, but I ran out of the red. Ooops. Whatever. It's still sort of Rasta, as you can see, which was the intent, and I'm sure once I block it, it will fit better.

For secondly, I rescued a kitten.

His name is Pippin. He was going to go to a friend of my aunt's, but the friend weenie'd out, so he's staying with my aunt. He's mostly staying with her because her elderly cat loves him, and she'd do anything to make him happy. So, Pippin stays.

He also looks rather studly in the hat. When we found him, in the alley between the houses I work in (ha! An actual alley cat!) he was gray. All over. As you can see, several baths have helped. The fur is growing back in where he had burrs stuck in and when I say stuck in, I mean imbedded in his fur. We had to shave him down in spots to get them out. He's got some sort of burn on his back foot where he'll never grow fur again, but he really doesn't seem to mind. He talks a lot, and he's a bit of an attention whore, but he's sweet. He doesn't like dogs, though, which broke my dog's heart, as he loves kittens. Oh, well, he recovered from the rejection easily enough.

Rasta Dog says: Eh, mon, I gots de Malibu, you have de pineapple juice?

Ok, so the true effect is lost by the fact that I had to cut portions of this picture out and it was quite....awkward, but you get the point.

Oh, well. Best to be getting back to my research and writing.