Kittens!

Our house is in a neighborhood close to the edge of town. We are near the end of a cul-de-sac, from which there are single-track trails leading up the hill to an old farm that now belongs to the City. The City mows a walking path around the perimeter of the field, and it’s a pleasant place to take the dog for his daily romps. There is also an old, falling-apart house in the field, which presumably served as the farmhouse before the City bought the property.

Last Wednesday evening, Tablespoon and I were walking Winston around the field. As we passed the old house, we were approached by a very brave and playful black and white kitten. His four siblings watched us more cautiously from the porch. We looked around for a mother cat, but she was nowhere to be seen. I sat on the edge of the porch and talked to the kittens while Tablespoon ran back to our house to drop off Winston and get a box. Upon his return, the kittens were easy enough to gather up and bring home.

We’re going to keep two of them, but are actively seeking homes for the other three. They are all quite well socialized, and all of them mastered the litter box immediately. There has only been one accident thus far, and it was while all 5 of them were hiding under our bed in the middle of a thunderstorm, so they can’t really be blamed for that. I think I am making the task of having them adopted more difficult for myself by attaching the caveat that I will only adopt them out to people who will commit to not having them declawed.

Here they all are, taking an afternoon nap on our (very messy) couch:

Aren’t they adorable? We are keeping the one second from the left, and the one all the way to the right, but we have not come up with names for them yet.

Any advice on finding homes for these little critters would be much appreciated. So far, I have posted ads on Craigslist and Freecycle and contacted the local animal foster program. The local humane society has a very long waiting list, so there is little hope of getting the kittens in there. I’m not in a huge hurry, as I’m thoroughly enjoying having five wonderful kittens marauding around the house. But they need to be immunized, and spayed/neutered, and I can’t afford to do that for all of them. And, perhaps most inconvenient of all, Tablespoon and I are leaving for vacation next Tuesday and will have to figure out what to do with them in our absence.

I am a runner.

Although I’ve been running fairly regularly now for 3 or 4 years, I have been resistant to labeling myself as a runner. I suspect it had something to do with being such a late bloomer. In middle school and high school, I was the kid who always managed somehow to get out of running the mile in gym class. I played JV tennis my senior year of high school, but that was the closest I came to athletics. Only the cool kids played sports, and I was certainly not cool. That attitude stayed with me through college; as soon as I found out that someone was particularly good at running or any other sport, I immediately assumed that somehow I wasn’t good enough to be friends with them.

But last Saturday, I ran my first marathon, a feat I never would have thought possible a few years ago. I thought only elite athletes were capable of doing something so crazy as running 26.2 miles in one go. And yet, I did it. It was the Country Music Marathon in Nashville, and it was the first really hot day of the year. Despite having injured my knee a few weeks prior and not doing any running between then and the marathon as a result, and despite not having trained in temperatures over 70 degrees and suddenly having to run in 85-degree weather that day, I ran the marathon. My goal time had been 5 hours, nothing too special, and I finished in 4 hours, 28 minutes, and 52 seconds. I’ve rarely been so proud of an achievement in my life. When I found Tablespoon at the finish line, where he’d cheered for me as I finished the race, I cried with pride and excitement. It was unbelievably tough, and I could literally barely walk the next day, but I can’t wait to run another one.

I am, finally, a runner!

Free Write on feet and toes.

This is my first attempt at responding to one of the free writing exercises hosted by Red Ravine. It’s nothing special, just like the topic it covers. It’s also the first post I’ve written in a hell of a long time, so I hope I get some comments even if the post itself doesn’t necessarily warrant them.

I’ve never liked my feet. But this isn’t really a self-esteem problem, because I don’t like anyone else’s feet either. Actually, compared to most people’s feet, mine are quite lovely, if I do say so myself. My mother always told me that I had beautiful toes, and obviously everything she ever said was the gospel truth. Although, she also told me more than once that they were prehensile toes. When I was growing up, she took every opportunity to grab my toes and pull them until they cracked, which drove me crazy. Maybe that’s part of the reason that I don’t like to go barefoot; I feel vulnerable without shoes on, afraid of sudden attack. My feet are also crazy ticklish. On the rare occasions that I’ve gotten professional massages, I’ve always had to specify beforehand that I absolutely did NOT want my feet massaged. Not even Tablespoon is allowed to touch my feet. Not that he’d particularly want to–I managed to marry a man who feels about feet the same way I do. So we are joined not just by our distaste for cilantro, but for our distaste for feet. Good planning!

It’s kind of ironic, really. Because the two of us use our feet probably a good bit more than the average person, or at least more than the average American. My feet have carried me a long way–over 1,000 miles once over a period of two months; 34 miles once in a single day. Have I mentioned that I’m running a full marathon in two weeks? I need my feet for that too, and they haven’t failed me yet. Well, that’s not quite true. I had a stress fracture in one of my feet in 2006 when I attempted to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, and it was one of several reasons that I had to give up that dream. But it healed up and my feet haven’t given me any problems since then. I should really be more appreciative after all they’ve done for me. (My knees, on the other hand, are another story. I was supposed to run 22 miles today, my last very long run before the marathon, and my right knee totally wimped out. Bastard.)

I don’t really know why I dislike them so. Of course there are a lot of pretty disgusting feet out there; ones with yellowed, fungussy toenails; darkly hairy feet; etc. Tablespoon manages to lose his big toenails on a pretty regular basis, and that, I can assure you, is a revolting process to watch. During the worst of it I make him wear socks to bed because I can’t stand the thought of his feet accidentally touching mine during the night. At least this hasn’t happened to me yet, although if I keep running long distances it’s likely to happen eventually.

My supremely weird younger brother suggested that my distaste for feet actually springs from a secret, suppressed fetish for them. I don’t think so. I’m pretty sexually progressive and have no problem admitting to my kinks and fetishes; I feel pretty damn confident that a foot fetish isn’t one of them. 

Another problem with my feet is that I can barely even reach them. I am probably the most physically inflexible person my age in the country. Really. If it gets any worse, I won’t be able to clip my own toenails in a few years. I think nail polish can make feet a little bit more aesthetically pleasing, but I sure as hell can’t paint my own toenails without a great deal of discomfort. (If I could, they’d be dark red most of the time.) So maybe I hate my feet simply because they’re so unfamiliar and distant to me. 

Or, could it be that I have a problem with grounding? Is my head too far in the clouds and I resent that I’m actually tied to the ground in too many ways? Who the hell knows. 

The joys of poverty*.

Tablespoon and I don’t make a heck of a lot of money, and the job I have now is the first “real” job I’ve ever had. Sometimes, towards the end of the month, money gets tight. We have to keep a constant eye on our checking account. It would be nice to have more money, of course. But there are certainly advantages to our situation. We have no money in retirement funds. No money invested anywhere. We have a “high-interest” savings account, and the interest rate on that account has dropped. As people across the country watch their retirement funds dwindle away, Tablespoon and I are doing just fine. We have nothing to lose.

* We don’t actually live in poverty. I’m not sure, but I imagine our combined incomes and childless status would place us solidly in the lower middle class.

This election season…

had better end soon. The candidates have started entering my dreams at night.

Buyer’s Remorse.

As many of you may know, Tablespoon and I bought a house this past April, at the encouragement of his accountant parents. His parents loaned us a substantial enough down payment that we were able to secure a low-interest mortgage, and because the sellers were desperate to unload the house, and because they were selling it themselves rather than using a realtor, we were able to get a decent house at quite a good bargain. (Well, it was a bargain for this town, anyway; if we had bought a similarly sized house in a nearby town it would have been much less.) Theoretically, I know that this should be a good investment. The housing market in this town is fairly well-insulated because it’s a rapidly-growing, popular place to live in a beautiful part of the state, and is home to a major University. In fact, friends of ours sold their house last week within three days of putting it on the market, for more than their asking price because they got three offers in the same day. So, theoretically, buying a house here is relatively safe. Tablespoon and I don’t make large incomes, but we do feel fairly secure in our jobs. He has guaranteed funding as a Ph.D student for an additional 3 years (provided he maintains good grades). My company is having its best year ever–in the midst of yesterday’s financial turmoil, everyone in my office received an email from the president of the company saying that things were going so well, we would all be getting a bonus in September’s paycheck. Our clients represent a diverse range of private sector, federal, and state agencies, so unless I screw up, I’m not likely to lose my job. All in all, then, we should feel pretty happy about our decision.

But…we don’t. Or, at least, I don’t. For one thing, I’m just not sure I like owning a house. Even though the house is in decent shape, it’s still a lot of work to maintain. It’s gotten much harder for us to get away for the weekend, because we always have painting to do, or erosion problems in our steep yard to shore up, or insulation to install in the attic, or figuring out why the hell the upstairs shower leaks into the downstairs bathroom. We have much less free time, now, and I’m having a hard time believing that this it’s worth it.

The house is also simply too big for us. It’s 2000+ square feet, and we hardly use the lower level at all. We each have an “office” on the upper level, and we probably enter those rooms once every few days. Because one shower leaks, we only use one bathroom (of the three in the house). Despite the fact that all these other places see very little use, they still, miraculously, get dirty and their corners fill with spiders and cobwebs, and I have to clean the whole place. We’d be perfectly comfortable in a home less than half the size–500 sq. feet, I think, would be perfect.

Can it really make that much more financial sense anyhow, even if we will see a significant profit when we sell? We could rent a perfectly adequate house or apartment for half of our monthly mortgage payment, without even taking into consideration property taxes, homeowners’ insurance, weekly trips to Lowe’s, etc. If we rented, and took the difference between the rent and the mortgage and invested it (and I realize this is a terrible time to talk about investing money anywhere), isn’t there a good chance that we’d come out ahead?

And, of course, part of me thinks that our whole society is going to collapse within the next few years, that we will both lose our jobs despite how things look now and we’ll be saddled with mountains of debt for a house that is no longer worth anything, and will never be able to move this town that neither of us likes, and–and—

A peculiar offer.

I read a lot of books, and rather than check them out from the library I tend to buy some at the local thrift store and trade for others on sites such as bookmooch.com and paperbackswap.com. Lately I have also been selling a good number of books and CDs on Amazon. My involvement in such activity ensures that I have almost daily contact with the women who work in the downtown branch of the Post Office. We always exchange friendly small talk whenever I come in, and they comment on the number of books I send and how much money I must be making (very little, actually, hardly enough to cover postage). My books are always prepackaged before I mail them, so it’s never obvious what type of book I read. Today, after exchanging the normal small talk, the mailwoman told me she’d just finished a wonderful book, she had it with her, and would I like to borrow it. Because I was flustered and surprised and it was such a generous offer, I accepted without even knowing what the book was. Now I’m stuck with a book I have no desire of reading. It is in the genre that I would call either pulp fiction or the derisive and mildly offensive “chick lit,” and what Amazon would call a “mass market paperback.” I don’t read this type of book. I have been known to read books from Oprah’s Book Club, but that is as far as I am willing to go (and truly, some of the books she chooses are very good). I’m a bit of a snob, I realize, but that doesn’t bother me. So, I don’t want to read this book, and don’t have the nerve to just tell the woman that. I suppose I’ll read a couple of reviews/summaries of it so that when she asks me about it, it won’t be obvious that I haven’t read it. Just like cheating on a book report, really.

BONUS: I thought I would be late to class today, so I was walking rather more briskly than usual through campus. (I always walk fast, and am endlessly annoyed by people meandering along slowly, three or four abreast, keeping me from reaching my destination speedily. Most people get road rage–I get sidewalk rage.) I am wearing my Dansko shoes today, and although they are comfortable as work shoes go, they’re not especially good for speed-walking. As I went down a short flight of steps, my shoe slipped and I fell sideways. I wasn’t physically hurt, except for a minor scratch on my palm, but my pride certainly suffered. There were plenty of people around, and I know that plenty of them watched me fall; fortunately, most of them were good enough to ignore me completely, and nobody offered me assistance. Perhaps the day will come when I’d like people to help me when I fall, but right now, I’d rather they just pretend not to see me at all. I stood up, brushed myself off, and continued to class. I got there on time.

Awkwardness, repetition, and chicken.

Last night, Tablespoon and I watched The Graduate, starring a young Dustin Hoffman. Good movie! We decided that’s what Tablespoon would be like if he ever decided to have an affair–really awkward, totally unsmooth. Anyway, I was really looking forward to the soundtrack for this movie, as I am a big fan of Simon & Garfunkel. But I was actually pretty disappointed. S & G have a pretty huge repertoire, but rather than dipping into their massive catalog, the same songs were played over and over again. The Sounds of Silence played three times, I believe (at least twice).

Scarborough Fair played something like four times–and it’s not even one of their better songs. Mrs. Robinson–naturally–played quite a few times as well. I was sick of all of them by the time the movie was over.

I’ve been doing an awful lot of running lately, having been pretty inspired by running the Blue Ridge Relay. Lately, though, I’ve been feeling somewhat protein-deprived. This came to a head yesterday when I walked from my office to the nearby 7-11 to buy a Naked juice. As I was waiting to check out, I found myself drooling over the disgusting fried meat products displayed in the rotating glass case on the counter. A reminder: I don’t even eat meat! Last night I dreamed about fried chicken. I’m afraid 20 years of vegetarianism is about to be sacrificed for the sake of one month of excessive running.

At a town hall meeting yesterday.

A woman addressed Sarah Palin with the following query: “Gov. Palin, there has been quite a bit of discussion about your perceived lack of foreign policy experience, and I want to give you your chance, if you could please respond to that criticism and give us specific skills that you think you have to bring to the White House to rebut that or mitigate that concern.”

You might think that, when asked specifically about foreign policy experience, the person being questioned might actually try to come up with something, oh I don’t know, at least somewhat related to foreign policy in her answer. But not our gal Sarah!

Her response: “As for foreign policy, you know, I think that I am prepared. And I know that on Jan. 20, if we are so blessed as to be sworn into office as your president and vice president, certainly we’ll be ready. I’ll be ready. I have that confidence. I have that readiness. And if you want specifics with specific policy, or countries, go ahead and you can ask me. You can even play stump the candidate, if you want to.’’

Well. Great answer. Thanks for clearing that up. I feel so much more confident knowing that you have “confidence” in your own “readiness,” despite your having no reason whatsoever to “have that confidence.”

Oh, and regarding that last part of her answer, where she said “if you want specifics…go ahead and you can ask me” — she didn’t actually give the questioner a chance for a follow-up question.

What the hell?

This evening, when I tried to sign into that evil site, I was informed that my account had been disabled. When I clicked on the “Why was my account disabled?” I read the following message:

Your account was disabled because you violated Facebook’s Terms of Use, to which you agreed when you first registered for an account on the site. Accounts can either be disabled for repeat offenses or for one, particularly egregious violation. 

Facebook does not allow users to register with fake names, to impersonate any person or entity, or to falsely state or otherwise misrepresent themselves or their affiliations. 

We do not allow users to send unsolicited or harassing messages to people they don’t know, and we remove posts that advertise a product, service, website, or opportunity. 

Our Code of Conduct outlines the types of content we do not allow on the site. This includes any obscene, pornographic, or sexually explicit photos, as well as any photos that depict graphic violence. We also remove content, photo or written, that threatens, intimidates, harasses, or brings unwanted attention or embarrassment to an individual or group of people.

I cannot for the life of me think of anything I may have done on Facebook that would have violated their Terms of Use. I’m upset because I feel as though I’m being wrongly accused, and frustrated that there seems to be nothing I can do about it. There’s no customer support anywhere on the website; they won’t tell me what I was kicked out for; I’ve stored a ton of my photos on that site, and now they’ll all be gone; and, what the hell do they think I did???