Animals I'd Like to Own

Sometimes I think I'd like to be one of those old cat ladies with a million cats...but then I think about the smell and I realize that it's never going to happen. Unless I get really rich. Because then I could hire someone else to clean the fifty gazillion litter boxes four or five times a day, and take all the dirty litter out and open all the windows and spray all the odor neutralizer. Come to think of it, even if I'm rich I'll probably stop at five. Or six. But that leaves so many other animals:

1. Cats - More kinds of cats than I can even tell you, an F1 or F2 Savannah, a Japanese Bobtail, another Turkish Angora or three or ten, an Egyptian Mau, a Ragdoll, a Siamese, just about everything except those stupid looking, squashy-faced Persians, and their bitchy Himalayan decedents.
   
2. Goats - Especially pygmy goats. - At least three. Maybe five. Fresh goat milk rocks, less than fresh goat milk tastes horrible.
   
3. Horses - At least three. Herd animals are happier in herds.
   
4. Chinchilla - They're soooo soft, and they smell good, and how cool is an animal that takes dust baths?
   
5. Chickens - They have more personality than people realize, but I wouldn't want more than a few, since they're also kind of stupid and mean.
   
6. Small Dogs - Particularly a Papillon, a Beagle or a Cavalier King Charles. Not anything too small, or anything too high strung. Good working dogs. I used to want a Lhasa Apso, but I decided that they're too much work.
   
7. Big Dogs - Something like an African Boerboel or a Rhodesian Ridgeback. My honey's love of big, stubborn dogs is rubbing off. Weird, but true.
   
8. Bullfrog - I know, but someone I know has one, and I fell in love.
   
9. Rabbit - Who knew they could be litter box trained? Not me.
   
10. Ferrett - But probably only for a couple of hours, because I saw someone walking one, and it looked amazingly cool. Maybe owning one is extreme.
    
11. Hedgehog - It's weird, but I think they're cute and cuddly. Plus there's the thing where they run around in the balls.
    
12. Sugarglider - They're marsupials, they're small, they're cute. I really want a platypus, but that's just crazy.
    
13. Parrot - Or something similar. At least a conure, but preferably something colorful that might talk, but definitely cannot bite my finger off.
    
14. Turtle - Because I never got to have one as a kid. And kids should have pets.
    
15. Bearded Dragon - I like lizards, and honestly how cool is it to say 'yes, this is my pet dragon.' Plus, they apparently like interacting with humans.

I'm going to stop now, because when I hit the snakes this list will just get plain weird. I like animals. I do. I'm realistic enough to recognize that I probably won't own half of the ones that I want, but I'll keep buying lottery tickets, and hoping.

Halloween Costumes I Never Wore

I love Halloween, I really do, but I never seem to get my costume act together. I have made some fairly elaborate costumes for the kids and even worn one of the ones I made for the first offspring (which only fit me because it was hugely too big for him). But the ones I long for with the secret unrequited lust of a lonely candy-less child peering out the front window I never have gotten to wear. Which ones are those, you ask? Well:

1. Marie Antoinette.
2. Fairy (with working wings!)
3. Bride
4. Bride of Frankenstein
5. Guinevere
6. Queen Elizabeth (the first, not the dowdy)
7. 20's Flapper
8. 50's teenager (poodle skirts! sigh)
9. Knight in Armor - but you know, a girl knight, with the metal breasts on the armor.
10. 40's Mobster's Moll
11. Sexy Pirate Wench - ok, I did once dress up as a Pirate Wench, but it wasn't satisfying.
12. Harem Dancer
13. Flamenco Dancer
14. Tango Dancer - shoot, I just want to BE a tango dancer, forget the dressing up part.
15. Ballerina
16. Xena Warrior Princess
17. Victorian Heiress - This is kind of my own invention. Fancy dresses and rhinestones r kool!
18. French Maid - Maybe this one isn't exactly for Halloween.
19. Betti Page - Umm, or sort of a dominatrix thing in general.
20. Harlequinne

I would include Cleopatra, but I dressed up as Cleo one year, and looked pretty awesome, IMHO, but I refused to wear socks which would damage the authenticity of my costume, so my mother wouldn't let me leave the house. How old was I? Eleven, maybe? Twelve? Dunno, but I wonder to this day why I didn't just tell her I'd wear them and then take the stupid things off when I got outside. Guess I wasn't so devious back then. Anyway, maybe I'd have another go at old Cleo sometime, but it's not a must. I also dressed up as a hooker one Halloween when I was a teenager, and then a couple of friends of mine and I walked around knocking on doors and saying "Trick." We got a fair amount of candy, and also several invitations to come in at adult parties, and one guy offered us a drink. Nowadays I mostly don't dress up, mostly because what's the point when you've got nowhere to go? I do love this holiday, though.

What I Ate Today

In honor of my losing five pounds, I will bore you with yet another list of my dietary deficiencies:

1. Banana
   
2. Plum
   
3. Oatmeal with butter, salt, brown sugar and dried cherries (yum!)
   
4. A couple of handfuls each of dark chocolate covered cranberries and dark chocolate covered edamame.
   
5. Three or four handsful of stale popcorn
   
6. An obscene number of pills.

I've gotten to the point with my medication that it's killing my appetite, which has both it's good and bad sides. Except I'm not sure what the bad side is.

Things I Write About

Soooooo... in that whole vein of avoiding responsibility by taking on OTHER responsibilities, I've stepped up to lead my writing group for some unspecified period of time that will probably amount to as long as I am: a. willing to do it, b. doing it competently, and c. financially viable enough to pay the fees. (This mini list is a freebie!) I am a little frustrated that I can't get very much response from the 253 other members of the group. I guess to get a lively group of 20 or 30 regular participants, you actually need about 500 members. Crazy. Anyway, I will persevere. I am trying very hard not to hijack the group for my own purposes, but the temptation is veerryyy sttroonnnggg.

Anyway in honor of my new ascendancy, a list of the topics I am interested in:

1. Serial killers
   
2. Lesbians
   
3. Teddy Bears
   
4. Death
   
5. Chickens
   
6. Beads
   
7. Communities
   
8. International Jewel Thieves
   
9. Elves
   
10. Random Kindness
    
11. Geisha
    
12. Friendships
    
13. Aliens
    
14. Children
    
15. Quilting
    
16. Weight and Fitness
    
17. Goals
    
18. Vampires
    
19. Dysfunctional Families
    
20. Lovers
    
21. Cats
    
22. Gardening
    
23. Nocturnal Life
    
24. Food
    
25. Femme Fatales
    
26. Science
    
27. Unicorns
    
28. Writing (and do you know, I almost left this one out!)

If that's not enough to keep me writing for the rest of my life, well, I guess I'll just have to start being interested in something else.

What I ate today

Ok, so it's been a while, so I'll bore you a bit more:

1. Two bananas - I was feeling decadent
2. About two ounces of delicious trout
3. Some broccoli and carrots I sauteed in soy sauce and sesame oil
4. about 3/4 cup of rice
5. Nectarine
6. Handful of dried cherries
7. Sample of chicken breast - plain
8. 3/4 Cup of praline pecans - at least I hope that's all it was
9. Most of a Trader Joe's spa salad
10. Handful of dark chocolate covered blueberries
11. Two handfuls of dark chocolate covered edamame (and counting).
12. About 8 ounces of organic lemonade tea.

I've also had quite a bit of water today, and that's why I have to pee. Right now.

The Seven Deadly Sins

I can't get with the crazy religious thing, even a little bit. My sister told me yesterday that she has personally been attacked by demons, and that she believes that homosexuality is caused by an evil spirit that's attacking the world. Presumably the individuals, both human and animal, who manifest symptoms of this affliction (i.e. gays) are those who weren't able to resist the influence of the evil spirit. Where exactly do you go in a conversation like that? I just can't follow her in to this fundamentalist zealotry and live in the spiritually perilous world she lives in. I also don't want to be a Christian rapper.

I firmly believe that when I get to Heaven, there will be a little coffee house with amazing mochas (full fat, and whipped cream, please, this IS heaven), and St. Peter will be referring to a gorgeously eclectic scrapbooky thing with all kind of my life's memorabilia pasted in it (my baby pictures, movie tickets, mother's day cards from the kids, the notes I passed in 9th grade French class, and dozens of things that I've forgotten about), and every once in a while he’ll get to some dumb thing I did, show it to me and say “what was THAT about?” And then we’ll both shake our heads and laugh, then take a sip of coffee, and keep going. And when we reach the end of the story, I get to decide whether to retire to my personal version of heaven, or try another round on earth in hopes of doing it better next time. (Of course I’ve taken Bodhisattva vows so I’ll be saying, “send me back, there’s always more to do!”) In any case, I don’t believe in hell, it’s like saying ‘she’s the perfect mother…well, except for all that child abuse.’ Hey since this IS a list blog, we need a list. How about this?

The Seven Deadly Sins and Their Demons:

Pride - Lucifer
Avarice/Greed - Mammon
Lechery/Lust - Asmodeus
Anger/Wrath - Satan
Gluttony - Beelzebub
Envy - Leviathan
Sloth - Belphegor

Titles of Stories I'll Eventually Write

So in keeping with the making myself promises I don't keep, I haven't been writing as much as I should have, but I've been thinking a lot about things to write about. Unfortunately that doesn't count. But this counts as writing, yay!, so here are some story titles that may eventually become actual full-fledged stories.

1. A Visit From A Lady
   
2. Genevieve's Angels
   
3. Olivia's Hair
   
4. Remembering Philip
   
5. The Night Belongs to the Maintenance Men (is this the title or the first line of the story? I can't tell.
   
6. Another Senseless Killing on the Six O'Clock News

I have another story cycle in mind, 15 stories about death and dying, but I don't have 15 story ideas yet. And I need to finish writing Olivia's Hair, which was started as an exercise in writing group, but not finished yet.