Oh Tannenbaum

It's the small things

Yesterday I turned off the dvd player and sat back, feeling encouraged by the crime documentary I'd seen. It's not so odd, people get back with their old partners all the time! And hey, Mike didn't even blind me with acid. Bonus.

X-mess tree premature erection

December came barrelling in like a truck, and I barely dodged the wheels. The advent calendar was ready to go, the tree was purchased (dismembered and crammed into a cardboard box in the trunk), and the cat has been having a harder time wedging herself under the bed between the presents. On Monday, Gavin and I fluffed and mangled the plastic tree into as natural a shape as it could withstand, pulled the cat out of it, decorated it, pulled the cat out of it again, swept up the broken ornaments, let the cat have at it, and finally sat down to eat the ceremonial box of chocolates and listen to kitschy christmas tunes in its glow. Mike was happy that the tree was too small to fall on him this year, and frowned sadly into his absinthe, the Most Disgusting Drink Ever, which cost him $20 and was made worse by adding diet soda.

Oh no, is she blogging about her cat?

When I say "the cat", I do, of course, mean Sookie. I've had a piercing infection from her slobbering into my ear and chewing on my studs. At night she oozes across my neck to suck on the baby. Last night she leaped into the bathtub onto Gavin. This morning she buried a poop nugget in his shaggy rug. The two other cats spend their days avoiding her; Maura hides in the basket of the stroller, and Po thinks nobody can see her behind the curtain in the bedroom window ("curtain" meaning the old head-shop tapestry that we hung up because curtains are too effing expensive and nobody bought me a sewing machine for my birthday). Twice a day, Po comes out to eat, gets run around the house by Maura, who is being run around the house by Sookie, and then they all scramble back to their hiding places. Both Maura and Po looked like cannonballs with legs after their quarantine periods, but the constant threat of Kitten has started to run the fat off, and their saggy bellies wag when they run about. Much like me.

Hint hint

I finally yanked apart the old jumpy baby seat some well-meaning patron gave me and stuffed it in the trunk so it would stop embarrassing my office. Despite our idealistic handmade-by-earth-mother notions about toys, Leif loves the oversized plastic bucket adorned with baby busy balls and boob-eyed kangaroos (one a large stand-up rattle thing which sets off a musical jingle that makes your ears cry). Loves it. Yesterday he went into fits of laughter every time Gavin slapped the kangaroo in the head. And so the jumpy seat stays, while I plot its retro-punk makeover with plastic sprays and vinyl fabric... if only I had a sewing machine.