Nobody, darnit

I'm jittery right now, thanks to the new roommate situation. We've got one woman stopping by tonight, and we're meeting another guy for coffee tomorrow. This is putting me seriously off balance since hey, my home and my roommates are an important part of my life and identity, and I'm going to be intentionally bringing a complete stranger into this. At least I have a nice impression of our current candidate. I hope she likes us, too. One interesting thing to come of this is that I now feel like an editor. I got sixteen responses in less than 24 hours on the Craigslist ads. So here's a hint to people looking for a room: describe yourself and your living requirements a little. Offer to meet for coffee and please, if possible, don't have spelling errors. Assure us you've got a job. However, a generic "Hi, I'm Joe, let me know if the room's still open", is better than a description that makes you sound creepy.

In addition to roommate stress, I've probably got some post-novel ennui. So to keep myself distracted, I read a book (see previous post) and then sketched out my next novel. That helped, but exacerbated some stress, since this next novel is The Montana Book, and is exploiting the intense emotions I have wound up in the Bitterroot Valley. (The main character and I each have the same goal--to understand and banish the power this place holds over us.) And so, thinking on the book stirs up emotions.

Screw all that. It's time for the Day Job.

There is something about the acoustics of our house that makes certain (not all) noises in Audrey's room sound like they're coming from right in front of me, or to my left. (My desk faces the north wall of the house. The wall between our rooms is east/right of me. )

She's putting up Christmas lights around her room right now.

It sounds like there are things scritching and slithering through my walls.

So awriter and I were planning to go across town to the Fred Meyer. I glanced at the clock and said, "If we leave right now, or in the immediate future, we could catch the bus." And by that I meant, we can leave THIS VERY INSTANT and have a leisurely walk to the stop across the street, or we can leave in a couple minutes and RUN OUR ASSES OFF.

Audrey retreated to her room to Do Stuff.
She was Doing Stuff for a while.
I stood outside, occasionally calling out and occasionally getting an "I'm coming!"

She emerged holding a pink plastic grocery bag containing Stuff.
I instantly realized what had happened, but oh, well. I made her run, and we just barely caught the bus. All the while she cried, "I can't do it! It smells!" To which I responded, "How do you know! It doesn't!" (And it didn't.)

So yeah, that's how I made Audrey take cat poop on the bus.
Turns out she thought we were going to walk to the downtown station instead of catching the bus across the street, which is reasonable, but totally not what I had in mind. She tossed the bag in the garbage at the downtown station and all was well in the world.

This morning I was in the kitchen trying to find the words to rant about writing Nazis. (I'm still trying to figure it out. I think I feel like I'm cheating. Easiest Villain Ever.)
Keffy turns to me: "Wait, you're writing about fairies and Nazis?"
Me: ... "Yes?"
Apparently Hellboy has ruined Keffy on the fairy/Nazi combination. If I'd thought it at the time, I would have whined, "But they're Pan's Labyrinth fairies, not Hellboy fairies!"
And it was in that moment that I realized I'm trying to be Guillermo Del Toro.
Well now I know what atrocious thing my Nazi's are going to to. Eye poking. Lots and lots of eye poking.Keffy

Places that take exactly the length of The Doors' song, "The End" to walk to:

My work, from the old House of Entropy.
The grocery store and back, from The Nightmare House.

Okay, I'm not much of a fan of undersized rat dogs, but out neighbor's new doberman chihuahua thing is stalking butterflies and bounding through the way-too-deep grass* and is totally cute.

*Seriously, it's like a foot and a half tall. And full of old bathroom fixtures.

The smell of squid is seeping into my room. ;_;

My aunt noted that I was probably the only person at Christmas who actually needed anything. This is true, and the only thing I need is new pants. Thankfully, that's what I received--a pair of very nice, very dark blue jeans. I wore these jeans quite a bit over the weekend, and was only able to take a very perfunctory, non-soapy shower on Saturday, thanks to the unpredictability of my aunt's plumbing. Yesterday was full of travel, Cabela's and late-running trains. No showers for me.
So when I went to take a shower this evening, I was most excited to do so. Right before I got in the shower, I thought, "I have zombie legs!" Because the light was making my legs look rather pallid, and I've been writing about zombies for 72 hours straight.

Then I got in the shower, and my legs really were cold, dead, grey-blue.

And that's what happens when you wear jeans before washing them. They turn you into a zombie.

Even more fun was when I got out of the shower and Teisel was throwing himself against the door. I let him in even before I dried off, just to shut him up. He proceeded to jump up on the edge of the tub and promptly became the second living being to lick my naked thigh. When I refused to let this continue, he licked the bathtub walls--not around the drain where he could actually get a drink. That, as Tye pointed out, would require him to actually get his toes wet.

And that's what happens when you live with the weirdest cat ever.

So the dead cat in our backyard? We're sure it was a hate crime. Because that poor cat wasn't black, its neighbors murdered it using their mysterious cat sorcery. When I came home, Tye and Chelsea were sitting on the back porch. "Princess", an adorable black kitty of delicate build, was rolling in the grass, gleefully making love to the sole dandelion that survived the last lawn mowing. Around the garage, the long-lost twin of cmpriest's Spain the Cat lurked. Next door, not one, but three black cats, only their beady green eyes visible, watched the exhibitionist Princess.