RIP Slippy

Slippy's most recent picture, taken about two weeks ago.

This morning I went downstairs to answer the door and saw a lady who lives a few houses down standing on my porch.  Slippy frequently hangs out at her place, so I was thinking “Oh great, what did she do now?”  When I opened the door, she said “Your baby got killed.  I’m so sorry.  It looks like she got hit by a car.”  Though both Dan and I have had pets all our lives, this is the first time one has ever been hit by a car.

Everybody who gets a cat knows they’ll probably end up outliving the feline, and with Slipknot’s rambunctious nature I had always had my doubts that she’d ever die of old age.  But still, it’s a sad occasion because she really was a sweet, smart animal. When we first got her and Sophie, they played and fought together in the house all the time.  Slippy soon became obsessed with exploring the neighborhood, and in recent months she barely came home at all.  If I tried keeping her in the house she would stand near the door and hiss at everybody until someone let her out.  My interactions with her had dwindled to the short car rides home from picking her up from all over the city when people called the number on her collar.  The most recent of those car rides was Sunday, and this time she actually stayed inside all day, sleeping on my desk, and slept on the bed a little bit that night.

But, back to this morning.  I thanked my neighbor for letting me know and went to find a box.  I walked out to the street to find another of our neighbors, one of the super-friendly old-school Oregon Hillians on the block, weeping quietly near the curb.  Through her tears she said “I just loved that little kitty so much.  She was so sweet and sometimes we would feed her.  Why wouldn’t they have stopped if they hit her?  I just don’t know why they wouldn’t have stopped.”  She was such a tiny cat that someone could have totally hit her and not even realized it.  It looks like she was in the business of darting out from under a car when it happened.  As practical of a lady as I am, nothing can cut the icy feeling of seeing your cat’s magenta blood spilled all over the asphalt.  It is just a cat.  But it’s just a cat who used to fit perfectly into the crook of my arm.  At least she probably never even knew what hit her.

I knew it would feel really weird to touch her, so I just did it as quickly as possible.  I picked up her stiff body and folded it into the box I had brought, and carried her to the back porch.  That was the heaviest shoebox I’ve ever lifted.  When Dan gets home we will give her a hero’s burial in the backyard.  Sophie has spent all afternoon in denial of her grief, playing with a ball downstairs and meowing for my attention.  She may not attend the funeral.

I’ma miss that little cat with the big yellow eyes, and that insistent meow that Jett called “barking.”  RIP Slipknot…everybody on the block misses you.

food as a gift.

I’ve grown to really appreciate receiving food from others, and I consider it a gift of the utmost class.  It’s such a no-brainer that it almost seems too obvious, that food is perhaps the easiest and most pleasing gift to give.  I’m going to take stock of some of the times that gifts of food have made me feel amazing.

Growing up, I ate three home-cooked meals every day.  All of my mom’s cooking was great, but I don’t think I really appreciated it that much because it was just there all of the time.  Friends would get excited about Mom’s food and seem really impressed that we actually had a set dinner time every night and that we didn’t eat in front of the TV.  Since I was deprived almost completely of frozen food, I remember adoring Totino’s Pizza Rolls after having them for the first time the summer after 11th grade.  My boyfriend at the time, a latchkey kid, had a routine of eating something frozen, unhealthy, and full of cheese after school every day and I was happy to join him.  Pizza rolls, bagel bites, Hot Pockets, and other frozen treats seemed like the holy grail to me.

But having grown out of that youthful fascination with the freeze-dried and the cheese-filled (note: actually I’m still way into those foods), I’ve come to look forward to meals at my parents’ house with gusto.  Every time we go over there, I know Mom is cooking something amazing and that I’m going to have that very calm, satisfied feeling after the meal that only Mom’s cooking can produce.  Spaghetti, fried chicken, rolls, mashed potatoes, salmon cakes, veggie paninis, salad, baked macaroni and cheese, egg rolls…these are just some of the regular occurrences at Mom’s table.  No doubt others feel the same way about their mother’s cooking — that everything she makes is the BEST of that particular dish, and that anybody’s else’s interpretation of that dish is somehow off.  On top of being stuffed with a delicious dinner, most nights when we go over there we get a grocery bag full of leftovers to take home.  I love having those leftovers for the rest of the week, taking something of the comfort of Mom’s cooking to work with me or even serving it to guests.  With her usual leftovers and her summer garden produce, visiting Mom regularly keeps me from having to go to the grocery store very often.  And that is another gift on its own.

My next reminiscence takes place sometime in 2003 or 2004, when I was nearing graduation from college and trying really hard not to go into any further debt in order to reach that goal.  At the time my friend Jason lived across the street and was “a regular fixture at family gatherings, holidays, mornings before school, and most afternoons” as they say in The Royal Tenenbaums.  We often had tea together, and he was well aware that breakfast was my favorite meal of the day and that it usually consisted of some combination of eggs, toast, grits, english muffins, and the like.  Upon reaching a particularly rough patch financially, I set down a rule for myself that I was not to go to the grocery store again until I had eaten the entire contents of my cabinet.  As you might imagine, my days were a little sadder when I had plain cellophane noodles for breakfast or dried-up bricks of bouillion for lunch.  One morning Jason just showed up at my front door unannounced, and I’ll never forget seeing him standing there on the porch with a full grocery bag.  He stalked to the refrigerator and began putting things away: a whole bounty of breakfast foods!  “Don’t ever say I didn’t give you anything,” he said, and I haven’t.  A hearty breakfast restored my spirits, and the sweet gesture of taking care of a friend meant a lot to me.

The process of cooking was always a part of the hospitality I felt when visiting my friend Mandy, who is likely to be making something delicious if she has people coming over.  Whereas I get stressed if I’m still doing prep work when people come over, Mandy has the gift of being able to cook and talk at the same time and to let her guests get involved in the cooking as well.  She has answered her doorbell a few times with one of her signature zucchini rounds in one hand, patting it flat with the other hand and smiling away.  Her stuffed mushrooms disappear at an alarming rate when passed around amongst hungry partygoers.  One day  I came over and we baked madeleines together and talked about boys as the wonderful smell of cookies filled her kitchen.  We’ve celebrated the release of one of the Harry Potter books with homemade butterbeer.  Recently Dan and I met her for some drinks at Mars, and she brought me a jar of pickled vegetables that she had canned with her grandmother.  Part of what’s particularly great about Mandy is that I know she loves giving food as a gift, and she knows I love receiving food as a gift.  And so our friendship is locked into place with memories of baked goods and blackberry-picking expeditions.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was IM-ing with my friend Daron, who has been known to try baking lime bars unsuccessfully, and who now lives in LA instead of across the street from me.  I was telling him about how great everything is and about how I don’t have a care in the world except for one: wanting fancy cheese and not being able to justify buying it instead of paying the bills.  He was very sympathetic, and we talked for a while about how the simple indulgence of some nice cheese can really make or break a meal.  A few days later I had completely forgotten about that conversation, and was heading into the kitchen to try a new recipe, making a mental note to myself that I would have to substitute swiss or cheddar instead of goat cheese.  For some reason I decided to check the mail first, and found a package waiting for me on the step — full of several different cheeses surrounded by ice packs.  My eyes filled with tears of joy as I pried open each package and sampled the cheeses with delight.  So on one of the hottest days of the year I received cool, refreshing cheese in the mail and then made a successful, goat cheese-laden tart for dinner.  WIN.

These are just a few examples of the many times I can think of where receiving food as a gift has affected me profoundly.  I could mention a dozen other people I know who bake amazing cupcakes or make the most perfect sushi or give out free garden-fresh produce.   So the whole point of this rambling essay is to say how much I enjoy and appreciate this simple gift, and how much I hope to keep being its happy recipient.  <3

of hugs and horizontal rain.

This weekend was the usual BFD whirlwind, and everything went as planned except for the thunderstorm that smashed through Hadad’s on Saturday afternoon.  Kenny said it best: “When you’ve got horizontal rain, it’s time to go.”  TRUE.  It was fun smushed into a gazebo with 200 of my closest friends and one beer bong (as a documentarian I had to force myself to observe rather than discourage) until I started freezing and noticing that peoples’ lips were turning blue.  Ah well!  It was all worth it for the hour or so I spent floating quietly in the lake before lunchtime, and for the hugs I got from out-of-towners, and for Kristin’s cherry vodka and 7-Up.

I also hung out with Richmond ex-pats Nicole and Jordan this weekend, went to the anniversary party for 240 Minutes, lunched at my parents’, and potlucked it up at church.  Can’t wait to spend this week recovering from the year’s busiest and most notorious weekend.

of whirling and waiting.

This is one of those times where I sit down to write, and nothing comes.  I’m having to force it out.  The past few days have been packed with lots of activity, much of it in preparation for Dan going on tour.  Now that he’s gone I should be in a bubble bath eating bonbons, or whatever the accepted “girl time” norm is, but instead I’ve committed to going to like 14,000 parties.  This always leaves me (1) at a loss to describe all the greatness I’ve encountered, and (2) with my head in a fog.

Jono definitely NOT getting mad air. Photo by Phil Bowne.

The Black Iris party: Everybody Loves Halfpipes
Last night was probably one of the top three or so best parties I’ve ever been to.  My talented and entertaining friends at Black Iris threw a big party at their studio, where they’ve recently built a halfpipe.  I got to watch a bunch of my friends shred it up on the halfpipe, enjoy delicious tacos and the signature Black Iris cocktail, watch Bad Veins as well as Marshall Costan and the Awesome Few, and dance it up into the wee hours of the night with DJing by Cam and Asa.  I met a lot of new people, caught up with a lot of old friends, and just basked in the amazing party-planning abilities and unrivaled hospitality of the Black Iris crew.  I think I heard people yell “Can we do this EVERY night?!” several times throughout the evening.  My feelings exactly.  Also, Hugel danced!  For hours!  And he’s a genius!  He’s been holding out on us all this time.  Today I’m sore from the dance floor and exhausted from staying out way past my bedtime…but it was worth it, as it usually is.  My pictures are awful of course, but Phil’s are GREAT.

Naomi and I showing Ben how it's done. Photo by Phil Bowne.

Occupy My Mind

I’ve been looking forward to Dan going on tour for a while now, because although my favorite thing in the world is being with Dan, my second favorite thing in the world is being alone.  So I’ll have plenty of time this month to sew, read, paint that bench I’ve been meaning to paint, plot for upcoming projects, swing around in the hammock, and just sit with the cats in the dark.  At the same time, though, I feel more in love with him than ever and it strains me to be apart from his beautiful face and his comforting voice for very long.  Also, people in town have started frantically demanding “WHERE’S THE MAN?” anytime Dan isn’t with me.

Ah, Miscellany

• Thanks to Tigerlilly for praising my wardrobe and stomping grounds!  Flattery will get you everywhere.
• Oh decor8, I love doilies too.
  
• Jane goes vamp?!
  
• This was pretty, and made me think of Kathryn.
  

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go prepare for more party-hopping tonight…

pretty pretty princess.

When my sister was a kid she used to play this board game with her friends called “Pretty Pretty Princess.”  One time I was casually observing as the game turned into a huge temper tantrum from her friend, who DEMANDED to be the Pretty Pretty Princess,  and just couldn’t [insert hyperventilation] stand [insert hyperventilation] the idea of someone else winning [insert meltdown].  There’s nothing sillier than little kids fighting over plastic beads, but on closer examination it seems that as adults we often live in a similar manner, locked in one big, vengeful game of Pretty Pretty Princess.

Today is my sister’s birthday so I thought I’d tell something awesome about her.  I remember wanting to smack the sense of entitlement right out of that little tantrum-throwing kid, but my sister did not actually reach across the board game and put her in a choke hold.  I don’t remember what she did, but I remember that as a little girl she was sunshiny and giggly and sweet, and could have a great time at Disney World hugging Minnie Mouse, or in the front yard playing in the rain by herself.  She is still sweet and still chill, and would always choose a good book over a temper tantrum.  Happy birthday, Megan!