Betty cat sidles up
Shoves her way in
Lolls under my firm pressure
Kneading my gut.
Telling me with toenails uncut…
Stop working, stop everything–
Make more…
Make more love.

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3. AROS #1

Tomorrow I start teaching again which would normally make me feel as though I am lost to free time for a few months.

But, I love teaching. And I love my tutoring job, and I love the time I spend with my students and colleagues on campus, where, for the few peanuts tossed to me, I get the opportunity everyday to shift the way another person sees language and uses it.

After #Reverb10 ended, I didn’t miss the prompts, but I did miss the community of writing– that is, I missed knowing that while I was writing, I could almost hear the palpitations of 4,000 other bloggers breathing hard over their keyboard prompts.

Through Little Yawps, I found another writing community, called “A River of Stones: An International Small Stones Writing month.” The posts I write for this you can find under AROS. They are shorter, more poetic– condensed moments of attention. Fiona Robyn, one of the community founders, has her small stone page is here.

Here’s my small stone for this raining snow day.

Cat, you have that kind of
spinal curve which–
on sloppy street day–
expects only
the plushest fabric and
the scent of sleeping husband.

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The truth about life lies in this pat of butter.

We can ask for what we want.

We can even PAY for what we want.

We can desire and expect it. But we won’t always get it.

Here’s the bagel I had for breakfast at my favorite Milford cafe.

I order it in this way.

Me: I’ll have a medium coffee and a sesame bagel toasted with butter for here. And I like my bagels burnt. Well, practically.

He: ummm are you SURE you don’t want to try the Vanilla Macadamia coffee? If you don’t like it, you can HATE me.”

Me: “No thanks. Just regular coffee and the bagel.”

He: “Are you SURE? The coffee is, like, to die for.”

[deep pause]

Me: Just the regular coffee. And the bagel.  I really don’t want to hate you.

The Vanilla (yuck!) and the Macadamia (AWFUL) managed to distract both of us enough — him then and me now. From the real point. The. Bagel.

Or more to the point:

Butter Pats and The Meaning of Life.

The bagel came and it was nearly toasted, served with four butter pats.

I spread the butter and ate the bagel and it was just fine. But it wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t what I expected or desired.  It was a slice of life, served on a pretty yellow plate, with a medium regular coffee.

People do have a way of wanting what the want, the way they want it, especially when it comes to breakfast bread. And ordering food out is a constant battle for satisfaction.We say “bagel with butter” but what we really mean is: “Hello. I have so many unfulfilled needs in my overstuffed life. My jeans don’t fit very well anymore and I don’t like my hair. Could you please butter my bagel for me????”

We look into the eyes of a stranger, the underpaid, also-dissatisfied person across the counter and unknowingly entrust them with our everyday luxuries. We ask for our heart’s desire, hope for the best and we are often disappointed.

A Bovine Revolt?

My friend Jessica, who is a vegan, is very funny and very ranty lately on Facebook. Lately she reminded us all (via Status Update) that a really good way to offend her– and the entire population of Vegan-onia– is to plan a subversive cheese attack. This is done but mixing “just a little bit”  of cheese into food served to her (or her vegan comrades) after they’ve asked for it without.

I thought of that as I was internally whining about my butter this morning. We can ask for what we want, we can even expect it, but life inevitably hands us obstacles.

Often, apparently, in dairy form.

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There is a lot of wasted life, and so much of our time is used beating back the natural cycles.

Shouldn’t we just leave the rabbits be? Let them mate and mate in our back yard, eat all of our hardwork, hard-earned?

Shouldn’t we look at them and see the best of them? The softness of their fur and all their finest qualities?

Shouldn’t we make excuses for them, and say “Well they are hungry too?”

Even bunnies make mistakes, and end up dead in the road, under apathetic car tires.

The old fairy tale likes to paint Peter Rabbit as the prodigal son. He’s punished by losing his dinner, sent to bed with no blackberries.

In the winter, though, what will the farmer’s wife eat, if Peter Rabbit is too selfish?

You’ve got to dig down deep, buried the fence where they can’t see. You’ve got to work around their gnawing manipulations. If you want to best the rabbits in your perfect garden.

Some rabbits are not rabbits at all.

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Valerie Weaver-Zercher’s musings on “The Philo-Lilac” (available only in hardcopy… not yet available online) in Orion Magazine this month poses the question I am pondering myself– what’s that emptiness and loss of rejection in the work world–  even when it’s something you are pretty sure you don’t want?

Previously I blogged about the political in-fighting at my current job–trust me. Not worth re-reading. Summary: I am one of the Billy Goats Gruff. Work is like crossing the bridge. My students are the nice green grass on the hill over there. Well, since there’s only one other “key” character in this story, I’ll let you guess which character the Boss is playing in this grim tale.

What I will say about this, currently, is this: my job as an adjunct professor in this kind of work environment doesn’t represent the ideal picture of  job security, anyway. So, QUESTION: at the end of my “contract” this semester, is it weird for me to feel so unhappy that there’s no paper in my mailbox offering a course next fall?

So I am left in that place, again, of uncertainty.

Should I cool my heels and wait to be asked to teach the ungrateful-yet-needy hoard again? Or, turn away and decide to take the plunge into the Next Thing, whatever that will look like? All my ideas always seem to be the Philo-Lilac: beauty and uniqueness that only I can see.

There’s a change happening in my department and my colleagues tries to reassure me that “It’s all up in the air” — like invisible pollen. It collects on our car hoods and travels carelessly through the window screens, but we can’t stop it, collect it, or name it.

Suggestions welcome.

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As the result of a good friend transferring overseas indefinitely, we are now the proud–if temporary– parents of a beautiful and wonderful dog named Kiyomi.

If you are wondering what “Kiyomi” means, well, I am sure I asked her owner once, but had long-forgotten, so I had to Google it to find out. A Japanese citrus fruit, similar to the tangerine. Hence, I reckon, the name must be a nod to this lovely dog’s red coat, which in all the wrong light, merely looks brownish.

If you are wondering HOW? we are daring a dog at this point, thus adding another life in the house (my Shasta daisy is looking raggedy), well, there are few dogs we would dare with and Kiyomi, who is part Australian shepherd, part red heeler, and mostly Xanax, is one. She is extremely well-suited for the sort of house where a 15-month-old screams “AHHHHHHHHHAAHHHHA!” with delight and grabs fistfuls of tail whenever possible. (The same kid who’s learning the “gentle” pats pay off, but so does feeding the dog from her highchair tray).

Note from the photo the happy co-existence of Queen Betty and new gap pal. Betty is never more thrilled (which she is demonstrating in this photo) than with four-legged company. The mini, two-legged kind haven’t been her cup of tea so far. Besides, I think she might be glad to have the spotlight off her for a while.

As for me, I am glad again to have an excuse to go walking.

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We’ve got the fatties back in our yard, and I am responsible. Squirrels get happy around Halloween here– they love to snack on our jack-o-lanterns, 5 times their size. I encourage it, really, sort of hoping that they will end up just too slow to move, and find themselves trying to dodge the car tires, unsuccessfully.

Being the environmentalist I am, I feel a little bad about wishing my squirrel friends were dead.  I mean, I am supposed to love animals, want the whales saved, eat dolphin-friendly tuna and such, right? I guess, but there is just something about stories of untimely animal deaths that amuse me. Not like funny hahahahah, but more like “Check that out… a mangled Bambi in the school crosswalk. Huh. Wonder what the kiddies will think of that.”

We are all just a bit too serious about death, I think. Roadkill is great for reminding us about the important things in life, like death: “Hey, it can happen anytime, and in the worst way imaginable!”

One of my favorite Trigger Happy TV videos is the Squirrel Gang incident, set on Portobello Road.

We have to be careful, and take measures, such as overfeeding our squirrels with jack-o-lantern flesh, so they’ll get slow and fat, to avoid problems like these.

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The Universe sent me a message the other day. It said:

“You can always tell an old soul, Elizabeth, by how friendly they are to trees…

“…and dogs.”

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Since Colin and I returned from London, we are able to indulge in having animals again. Our first feline acquisition is BETTY (seen here), who is completely bonkers.

Betty is a rescue kitty, who was feral for the first 10 weeks of her life. But that doesn’t explain her madness. Nothing could explain her penchant (obsession, more correctly) with twist ties.  Or the fact that she snubs her nose at fish and chicken but seems to adore the little round “Science Diet” nuggets we serve her. She cuddles with the bannister post. She comes when we call–  but just part way. Then perks her ears, looks at us from the end of the bed, then pounces on our chests.

And then there is our chests. Chests, it seems, are the only location on our body that Betty really likes. She’ll come stand on our chests, even lay on Colin(!) when we are laying on the bed (ONLY the bed!) with the comforter over us.

Betty disdains of Colin’s hair-covered skin, and won’t come near me if I lay on the sofa with the blanket covering me there. And, in fact, the sofa blanket she hates most of all, stepping peevishly around it whenever it partially blocks her access to our legs.

Oh.. that’s right. I forgot … she also will come to our legs. When she sit on the couch, with our legs crossed. Propped on the table. And properly covered in pants, not shorts, of course.

Betty generally prefers Colin… that is unless Colin isn’t around. Then she prefers me. She rolls on her side on the kitchen table to get a belly rub, but if you approach her wrong (like breathing, for example), she’ll become so frightened of having her belly rubbed — by us or anyone else — she roll right off the side of the table.

She’s a klutz, a moron, a dork, a weirdo and a dweeb. But she’s adorable… especially when she’s cuddling the bannister post and carrying a twist tie lovingly in her mouth.

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