Sleep, Thou Elusive Elf, Where Are You?

The brain has been clicking on at 4 a.m. into a Hi There! awakeness that causes lax judgement and naps later in the day.  I dislike naps, what a waste of daylight and afterwards I still stagger about in a thick-headed stupor.  Better to plunge on, and make myself get through the hours but lord, I am tired.  After my fighting with not sleeping, the cats come in with breakfast requests and since they dislike each other for the most part, belt whomever is within slapping distance.  I become an airport take-off launch site when they run me over in their pissed-offedness.

I have been getting the place ready for the sometimes annual apartment inspection, mostly done for checking smoke alarms.  Some managements want windows washed, others look for snuck in extra appliances such as a dishwasher, freezer or air conditioner; too many people, pets, or boxes of stuff will get you a checked box in the troublemaker column.  It depends if the folks inspecting are the maintenance crew, who care less about anything but the alarms and drippy faucets; or management from the office, who rate their job security by the number of infractions reported.  I hold my breath in hopes that a few of the cats hide; I wait, fiddling by organizing files on the laptop.

Right at five minutes after the alloted time, a very tall lady is at my door with a clipboard; she is gracious and asks me to show her that my stove will turn on.  Most of the cats did not take off, three are visible if you look hard, for they are sleeping.  It's the ambassador that surprises me, the Tasmanian Twitch, Stevie.  He walks his big self up to the lady and looks up expectantly, I shoo him, he comes back, I shove him, he returns, apparently in love.  "I'm a dog person, mostly," says the inspector lady and Steve body blocks her by plopping down at her feet, a large barrier of anticipation.

This is the cat who drew blood on one vet and two technicians the last time we visited for his annual check-up.  Declawed in an earlier life, he has the speed and mercy of a cobra, and uses his fangs for random destruction of human life, especially the human who wants to give him a shot or check his liver with a tummy squish.  Now, he is Mr. Personality educated by charm school, and goes limp when I try to drag him off to the side.  She steps over and asks how many cats do I have?  Three, I have three (five).
Two of the others are sleeping in the living area, one in a box and Min up on her shelf; the other two have spirited themselves away--Tulip will never visit with people, yet I am surprised that Kai, who usually comes out tail up, is hiding also.  My stomach crosses its fingers, hoping they stay put.

I need three smoke alarms and a faucet tightened, the rest looks good, she says,  Whew, hoping that this is goodbye, I soon find it ain't.  She loves plants and asks if I would mind giving her a clump of the sansevieria when I divide it.  Sure sure, thank you sooo much g'wan get outta here, I feel luck is being pushed regarding the cat population, and want. her. to. go.  However, she shows me why she has a job that is mostly talking to people, for I hear about her daughter's dog, her own  plants, oh look another kitty (Min on her shelf) (yes she's my oldest), and the inspector wonders is it 3 years or 4 for every human year and how old would that be?  Go, go on, get the hell out of my apartment, lady.

I step out of her way and turn towards the door, but she doesn't move.  The creeping suspicion that maybe she is stalling to see if any other cat comes out raises a small warning cry, for who else would have four cat boxes except for someone who has five cats?  I'll bring you those plants and some clippings down to the office Monday I say as casually as I can, and thank heavens, her one leg moves forward in the direction of Out.  The other leg co-operates, follows through with a full swing but then she pivots back at the open door.  I know an extended version of goodbye is gonna pour forth.  It does, but not as long as I expect, thank you thank you, close and turn that lock.

Now I am beginning to feel the past few night's lack of sleep, and have stopped the caffeinated tea by four o'clock.  What a comfy night, it feels so good to have passed inspection and the adrenalin is ebbing back to a long ways from shore.  The cats are all out, curling after their dinner into balls of snooze, and I am tapping here on the keyboard in grateful stasis.  Now I can turn back to drawing, and plan on hitting up the art store tomorrow for glassine paper to protect the pastel works in progress.  Strong winds are causing the building to sway, told by the ornament hanging from one cupboard door handle for it sways and hits the door, ringing metallic like a faraway bell.

You sleep well for me, if I don't.  I lay awake and think of things like x-rays, what if the building could be x-rayed while we slept, revealing scores of horizontal skeletons stratified in rising layers up to the occupants of the top floor, how fascinating that would look.  We would see our bone structures rising, walking in space, doing routines invisible except for our white, ghostly skeletons going through the motions.  My skeleton will soon be laying flat, surrounded by three plus two cat skeletons while fishy skeletons swim in their tank.  Tomorrow I shall turn back into a true human; tonight I rattle and writhe in ossified happiness.  Good night, sleep peacefully, you passed.




Maintenance will come by when I am at work, and because they are men with noisy, bangy tools, I know most everyone will duck and cover.

Life, Sliced

Have you ever opened a shut dresser drawer to find a living thing taking a nap, now perturbed for the intrusion of its catfort?  I scared the jeebus out of myself more than the little cat, who earlier had crawled into the middle drawer while I folded clothing.  Fine, check the drawer, no cat, shut it, go on to the next event.  Hours ago.

Now it was nighttime, and I wanted my pillow after a day of intensive cleaning and hauling things such as the television to the trash room.  Toddled into the bedroom and thought, say, instead of the usual t-shirt why don't I put on a pair of real pajamas?  Like regular people do.  I pulled the bottom drawer open and there, stretched out in a long sausage of cat fur, was Kai.  Totally knocked out and very warm from the closed in cave she had flipped into.  This feline Houdini must have squirmed into the lower drawer while the upper was half-open, and thank all gods she didn't lose her tail when the thing was shut closed.  By me.  

I jumped, and I am sure the neighbors heard me yelp, almost as much as even earlier in the day with a different drawer in the Same Dresser.  Digging through the sock drawer, I found a medium-sized black plastic box.  What the hell is this?  I save all sorts of things for grandiose, waste-not usage, and this summer was filled with crises and confusions, so some of my memory is wandering down the street after escaping the attendant cerebellum.  What the h--GOOD GOD, IT'S MY MOTHER!!!  I totally forgot that I placed her ashes there after keeping them in a cupboard next to the Harvest Spice melty wax tablets you put in a candle potpourri.  Dad, when alive, kept her on top of the tv with a note taped to the box, as if anyone had a question.  

Someday she'll be interred, I loved her more than more, but I don't want her here.  I guess I thought the dresser, which originally had been hers, was more appropriate even amid socks.  Dorothy Mae.  I told her that I was sorry to forget that she was put there, and pushed the container more to the back, next to an ancient photo album of her and her family when she was four.  She's okay with it, she'd let me know; however, the dresser is out to get me.  I am not opening it again for awhile, excuse me please if I wear the same clothes three days in a row.  Cats and ashes.  No wonder I take meds.  

Dusk stayed beyond its boundaries this evening, holding the sky in a translucent deep blue until half past six.  Spring is a month off, and even though winter has been milder than usual, it will be good to see green shoots pushing towards sun and sky.  One more chore before I can sit and think of things to make with paper, pencil, sticks of color; darker pigments become an evening sky behind human shapes, allowing skin to glow as if it were lit by fire inside, emotions arcing across the map of night.  Meteor showers forecast; incandescent minerals, heated and arrow true.   Good night.

Fuzzy-Wuzzies

Having received many an email that litanies happy stuff that "makes you smile," I have composed my own list of personally relevant tidbits of warm fuzzies.

I hope it makes you smile when...
1. The cat throws up on the linoleum instead of the carpeting.
2. Children jerk in their seats when you enter a classroom.
3. You find enough change in the couch cushions for doing laundry.
4. Maybe you found some potato chips down there, too.
5. The cauliflower you bought has become a puddle in the fridge and you are happy because now you
         don't have to cook it.
6. You are too old to care about shaving your legs before wearing shorts.
7. You found something you thought had been thrown away, and you then save it for another three years
         until you think you threw it away again.
8. You remember the time that you peed your pants in the cafeteria from laughing hard your senior year
         in high school, and realize that when they say, "You'll laugh about this someday," they are lying.
         You were wearing a brown corduroy skirt at the time.  The school nurse sends you home, but your
         mother makes you go back after you change.
9. You retain your integrity by not sleeping with the car mechanic who speaks little English but asks you
         if you are dating anyone even though you briefly think it might reduce your bill.
10. You get a midnight phone call that is a wrong number.  Anyone you know calling at that time can
         only have bad news or needs a ride home.
11. The homemade cookies make it through the mail, but are so mooshed they have become a new
         substance even the dog won't touch.
12. You have to hold the hand of a child so they don't hurt anyone or run out of the building.
13. You watch the expression on someone's face when they absolutely hate your gift but are struggling
          to say something nice about it. Their jaw moves for a good five seconds before any sound comes
          out.  Ten, if the gift is a set of plastic monkey patio lights.
14. You laugh for absolutely no reason and realize that means you took your meds that morning.
15. You have plenty of Purell in your purse.

Keep sending them, folks.  They do make me smile.  Goodnight.

More Soup

I am rich and set for at least two weeks of No Cooking, for in the freezer are 6 large containers of various soups.  Nothing like a quick meal scooped into a bowl and there you have protein, vegetables, and few carbs without digging through pots and pans and cripes, the ending sink full of dishes.  One bowl, one spoon, The End.  Less time eating means more time doing fun stuff.

Cream of mushroom made with cremini, shiitake, and the ubiquitous Agaricus bisporus, the grocery store mushroom is concentrated forest, woods, and earth with a cup of real cream and butter.  Eat one mushroom a week to sustain a healthy immune system, it's like taking a capsule of alternative medicine hooha except it's just a mushroom.  Not to scoff at the health food shop, lord knows they have gotten a few bucks from my wallet, and I would say most of it worthwhile.  Most.  Read the labels and do research, and you'll be fine.

Next is a container of chicken vegetable made with lovely chunks of chicken thigh, whose dark meat contains more vitamins, fat and calories as it is the weight-bearing muscle of the bird that practices endurance.  It has lots of a protein called myoglobin, which promotes iron and oxygen binding as the muscle works.  You try to catch a chicken, or maybe as a friend of mine has, run from a crabby one.  They are elusive, determined, and fast.  The white meat of a chicken tastes like wet cotton to me; it is found in the anatomical areas that need quick bursts of power, as in the muscles that sustain respiration in birds that mostly live on the ground.  A bird that flies more, such as a duck, will have dark meat throughout since the chest muscles are responsible for wing movement and need the capacity for distance.

I always have a supply of squash-carrot soup, the simplest of recipes: butternut, carrots, a bit of chicken stock and a can of coconut milk.  Next to that is a chili that is thin enough to qualify as soup.  Cans of tomatoes, three types of beans, raisins, ground beef, a few chocolate chips, garlic, oregano, cumin, chili powder, sometime pumpkin seeds if I have them, lots of onions, and a can of corn.  Rinse off all the canned items in a colander to eliminate sodium, but do put a small sprinkle of iodized salt in the mix.  Recent findings in thyroid science point to an interesting iodine deficit in areas of the country in love with sea salt, which has none added.  I stick with Morton's.  Cheaper, too.

We haven't had an iodine problem in this nation for years, since they started putting it in the salt; all this touchy-feely sea salt trend may be fun to play with, but if you are experiencing general lethargy, try going back to iodized salt.  I know, I know, "general lethargy" is a dopey term that blankets a lot of anything, but then again, iodine may just be the fine tuning you need.

There was a ham bone in the fridge and a half-bag of dried beans in the cupboard.  Tossed them together after an overnight soaking of the beans and then simmered on low for about two hours before adding onion, celery, and carrots.  If you add tomatoes, wait until the beans are soft or you are out of luck; the acid from the tomatoes (or lemon or wine) stops the cooking process and the beans will be like pellets of mockery swimming throughout the remaining deliciousness.

Lastly, a package of turkey backs had an attractive price of $1.76.  You can't find that nowadays, so it was quite the prize to bring home.  Tossed into the crockpot, the meat fell off the bone by the time work ended, and I finished making the soup with a short cup of jasmine rice, red peppers, carrots, onion, and celery, a cup of cream and a boullion cube.

Any soup tastes better the next day, and the whole idea of not having to cook from scratch is plenty attractive as well.  And I like making soup.  In another incarnation, I made soup every weekday in a basement kitchen for a cafe in Chicago.  People came in for my soup, it jazzed up the rather bland turkey sandwiches on pumpernickel or the mid-seventies spinach salad with mushrooms, hard boiled eggs, and canned bacon bits.  I got to try recipes and whittled the list to the favorites, some of which I still make: familiar gumbo, mulligatawny, tomato rice with mushrooms, a beef barley with dill pickles.  On the odd side were a spinach-ham-yogurt concoction, a tomato and oatmeal soup, a bread soup, cock-a-leekie with prunes, and kim chee with cucumbers.  My soups made you strong to face the day, still do.

Night time, pots put away, bowls washed, spoons in the drawer.  I drew a sketch today, first in a long time; I was pleased with it, hope the person who receives it is also.  This week shall be spent, at least in intent, on returning to drawing.  I have a tattoo to design for a friend, and many ideas for personal work that will be abetted by soup in a bowl as I push and pull pencil and color into human forms.  Sleep well, I tell you, my plants are stretching towards the window with small new growth, a sign of longer light during day.  Spring is closer than it is further.

 The light is welcome, for the dark winter shutters more than shortened sun in this latitude, and the nights have been exceptionally bleak without snow to reflect the moon or street lamps.  Still cold though, so pull up the blankets as you tuck in, check the animals, and turn out the lights, to let yourself float on pillowed dreams.  Good night.