Rachael

It’s a day off — finished my work week well and feeling strong, if tired. But because I get up at 4:30am on work days, it’s hard for me to sleep past 9am on days off, and that’s if I really, really try. So Lala’s still sleeping the sleep of the justified rocker, and I’ve been tidying and puttering, backing up the computer, things like that. Don’t you feel good when you back stuff up? You do if you’re like me, and only do it every six months or so….. (Of course, everything I write is stored online in two or three different (secure) places.)

Boy, that’s boring talk. Let’s have fun talk! Digit talk! (If you’re new, saga begins here.)

Th cat of my heart, continues to do well. VERY well. He’s still gaining weight — when I pet him I can still feel his backbone, but every day the padding gets a little thicker. He bitches and moans, all the time, which is just what he loves to do.

The front sun-porch, a spot that we use for some storage but where I also set up a nice writing spot, is now his space when he needs to be alone. He eats out there, he has a litter box, and the nicest thing is that we can leave the inner door open and just keep the iron security door closed, so he can sit by it and feel like he’s outside. The room is all windows, and he has many high perches from which he can view not only the street, but look into the living room to see how the kittens are behaving.

More and more, though, after he eats, he howls to be let into the house, even though the kittens plague him to death. They simply don’t understand that passing tails, especially THAT twitching, angry tail, are not to be played with. So Digit WHAPS them, and they skitter (skitten?) off, but they have memories shorter than mine, and minutes later they’re all like TAIL! MUST GET THAT TAIL! However, he tolerates them. He’ll sit next to them. He’ll ignore them. I never expected them to do this well. He won’t ever, ever speak to them unless it’s a growl, but he can share a lap with them. If they’re not near his tail.

Speaking of that tail, I really think he has much less feeling in it now (which would make sense, seeing as how much of his back end was seriously damaged…). That would explain his balance, how he appears a little off balance all the time, and how Waylon managed to hold it down that one time without him noticing and how, the other night while I was having a bath, HE DRAPED IT IN THE TUB and didn’t seem to care.

A little in.

and even more tail in the drink. (Why, yes, I WAS worried about dropping my cell phone in the tub, thank you.)

That tail, however, is still a good indicator of geological happenings. Last week I woke up to Digit growling furiously and whipping his tail back and forth across my face. Lala, still not in bed, could hear him from another room. Ten seconds later, a small earthquake, centered in Oakland, rippled through the room. It was a 3.2, and for those of you not familiar, a low 3 like that just feels like a big dog jumped up on your bed. A low 4 feels like more like an earthquake, but a 3-point-something just makes you go, huh? And Digit apparently HATES the sound of them coming.

And just look at that tail’s magnificence:

And when all is said and done, my sweet chickens, it looks like we will have about a THOUSAND DOLLARS to donate to Milo Foundation and Best Friends. I’m not sending it quite yet — I’m taking your excellent advice to wait until he’s all better, well and truly, but is that amazing or what? I’m still not over it, and I never will be. I love you all every day, and I pet his head and tell Digit so.

Sunday mornings make me sappy.

So I will close on this note. See that box up there? Behind Digit? I’ve been meaning to tell you about that. (This is the point, dear reader, when you should click away if you don’t have a cat and are offended by litter talk. We cat lovers LURVE our litter box talk.)

I read about this idea here, Ikea hacks for cat boxes. And it was seriously SO easy. See, we have a small (read: big) problem with Clara and cat poop. She sees nothing wrong with diving for the good stuff. I want to die every time she does it. We have to keep the big litter box in the kitchen — no room in the bathroom, and I hated seeing it there, and Clara LOVED having it there. So I had to do something.

This is a box from Ikea called Hol — there are two, this is the bigger one. You put it together and then you saw a small hole, just big enough for your cats to jump through. I used a tile-cutting saw just big enough to fit through the small holes (it was easy, I swear — I’m not a saw kind of gal). It’s big enough to place a large litter box into and still have room for litter/scooper/bag storage. And while Clara’s head fits in the hole, her shoulders don’t, and she can’t reach! Hahahaha!

Yes, that’s a gigantor Rubbermaid, not a litter box. Digit has issues and pees standing up. No litter box on the market is high enough for him — I use this, and when I started using this ikea box, I just cut a little away on the side so they can jump in. And yes, that’s Trader Joe’s pine litter. Wouldn’t use anything else.

So there you go!

Cracking open the Sofia Coppola Blanc de Blancs sparkling wine (let’s just call it champagne, shall we? Flout the Treaty of Versailles). It comes with its own straw! Champers in a can! Just the thing to celebrate, don’t you think?

I just typed The End.

For the first time, I typed The End.

It’s not really the end, it’s the beginning of revisions. But I did it.

I am so happy. I have a completed novel. My tongue is tingling. I might have breathe into a paper bag or something. I did it.

 

So my friend Emily, designer of many beautiful patterns, including Coachella, left me a comment saying she wasn’t THAT interested in Ravelry, since she knit her own designs. I hear that, oh, yes.

But out of the spirit of fun, I went to Ravelry, and looked up Coachella, and told her just how many of them were in progress among the 8000+ users, and how many times it had been queued, all that fun stuff.

I looked through the user photos.

And suddenly, a pattern that I’d had NO interest in making, because it looks so great on small-framed marathoner Emily and therefore probably not so much on me, suddenly jumped not only into my queue, but out of my stash onto my needles because boy HOWDY did it look good on the girls of a bigger size. Honey, we can carry this off, and you should make one, too!

Took only 5 TV nights to make, seriously great pattern. I went with Cotton Fleece, 2.1 skeins used, in alpine lilac. I went with the 29" bust even though I wear a 38" bra — the pattern says the 29 would fit up to a 36, and I wanted negative ease and I didn’t want it to fit too loosely. My racerback jogbra fits just right underneath, and I LOVE THIS.

Wearing it right now, in front of the fan.

 

PS – I made the skirt up there, too, I just realized. Pockets! Yay!

Confession: I have recently started a writing blog. It’s HERE, and it’s based on the Treadmill Journal idea I stole from PoMo Golightly (through the writing group in Ravelry! Yay!). It’s boring, mostly, and only documents my own writing angst, but the writers among you might like to read it, or try something similar. It’s certainly kick-started my writing again, in a big way. And I just wrote this, and I’m stealing it from myself, so you don’t even have to go over there, but this made me feel good:

I realized something yesterday, something huge. This novel I’ve been working on, it’s a genre romance. There. I said it. I’m writing it for a target audience, and I have writer’s guidelines in mind. I will say, right now, that having read romances for years and years as a teenager and into my early twenties, I knew there were a lot of bad ones out there. But I kept reading them because some of them were good. Well written. Engaging. Romantic. That’s what I’ve been going for. I can write literary fiction and Be Serious; I can and have pulled that off. But it’s been a much more fun ride, this silly romance. Really, really fun.

And perhaps that’s how I got this far, and reached this realization: I’M ALMOST DONE. No, really. Yesterday, I realized that I only had one more big scene in mind, and that it was the denouement. But that couldn’t be! I was only up to 66,000 words!

Then I checked the guidelines, and ahem, that’s above the upper limit for the slim-sided imprint I chose to target.

In eloquent literary terms: Dude. That means I get to write a few more scenes, and I’ll be DONE. Which means I will type the words The End. That, of course, won’t mean the end of work, lots of editing, and apparently, paring down to meet to word count, but that’s a good thing — there are several scenes in the book that strike me as background rather than essential.

But it’s there! The end is coming! It’s reachable! I could hardly sleep last night. Look at me, wasting all this time here. Need to be moving into writing.

Ha! I didn’t mean to post that sweater picture today — I had preblogged it while I was recovering, and I must have put it on the wrong day. What I’m going to post today is this:

**Hours before:

Now this is something I’ve never done. I’m lying on my stomach on Pompono Beach, just south of Half Moon Bay. This is just what I needed.

I spent the early morning driving Lala around, as she was leaving on her tour. And then, unreasonably irritated at having to fight traffic after going back for forgotten and necessary glasses, I decided to just keep driving. Counterintuitive, yes. But I got on 880 and headed south, intending to head for Half Moon Bay but not really remembering which bridge to cross the bay to get there.

I ended up going over the wrong bridge, but turned myself around, and found Half Moon Bay. I spent a few hours wandering, writing at a cafe, fondling yarn at Fengari (got away with only sock yarn and the new Vogue), and book browsing,. Then I headed south on Highway 1, enroute to Pescadero and that ollalieberry pie at Duarte’s I always rave about. 

On the way, I pulled over at Pompono Beach, grabbed my bag and the sheet out of the back of that station wagon, and here I am.

It’s gorgeous. I’m propped up on my elbows, facing the water. I’m typing lying on my belly, just like Carrie always did in Sex and the City, and really, it’s not as comfortable as she made it look. But it’s working.

Just a little cloudy, but with enough sun that I was too warm in my light sweater and I took it off to use it for a pillow later. Cool breeze on my arms, but my legs are warm from sun. The waves breaking at the shoreline are the exact color of the most common green of sea glass, with a deeper azure out toward the horizon. It’s bright enough that I can’t see the screen at all — I’m typing blindly and will fix typos later. The ocean is roaring.

There are a few families on the beach, some of them looking like they planned to be here, beach chairs, coolers. Some of the kids are in swim suits, which in northern California is just plain nuts. But they’re far away — it’s as if they got out of their cars, got on to the sand, and plopped down, not able or willing to walk for two more minutes to be away from the voices of others. The only thing that reaches me from the groups is the slight whiff of cigarette smoke, and it smells so good. I love that smell.

The surfers here aren’t that great, but they’re funny. They’re trying to ride, but the break is so close to the shore that few are getting up, and when they do they have to pump their boards hard with their feet just to stay on top for a few seconds.

OHMYGOD, a huge flock of seagulls is getting closer. Hate seagulls.

I can’t remember the last time I was on my stomach on the beach, playing idly with sand in front of my face, napping a little, waking and thinking a little. Pie soon. Yes.

**I wrote the above, then I took a little nap, and then I watched the clouds overhead. More like a very light, broken fog. It looked like, and I can’t help it, white cashmere fiber. Clouds of cashmere, all short fibers, poofing out above me. 

I can’t tell you how relaxing, how unexpected the day was.

I had a crab sandwich and a pint of beer and my pie, and I read my new Vogue Knitting at the counter at Duarte’s. The waitress liked me. I went a little farther south and explored the Pigeon Point Lighthouse (which is also a hostel and has a hot tub on the cliff edge — hello, private room!). (My cell phone was dead, so no photos, I’m so sorry. I would have loved to have shown you my day.)

I stopped and bought apricots and beets from a roadside vendor. I drove home singing.

And a bonus! Picture of a baby kitty! Smallest, wee-est, seven-week old baby too young to really be separated from his mother, but she was feral, and took off, leaving him behind:
Guess who?

My Digit! 11 years ago.  He’s doing so well…. his balance is still strangely off, but we’re watching him closely. He’s all healed, and he is NOT going out of the house. Nope. And that is all. Me, I’m recovering well but I’m tired from my long day. Still can’t talk for that long without throat pain, but the rest of me feels great! Hooray!