Kitten Nurse

Well, drat.

I was all psyched for this literacy tutor thing, and I couldn’t go to the info session with Ceri because I was unable to be out of bed for more than half an hour at a time. She thoughtfully brought back the information package for me. However, it turns out the training sessions are on the two nights per week when I’m teaching and when I’m at orchestra.

Double drat.

They repeat the training sessions in later months, but again, they’re on nights when I’m teaching. It seems that I am not meant to be a tutor at this time.

I am, however, to serve as a feline Florence Nightingale. A Florence Nightingale to felines, I mean. Now that the feral cat’s kittens that Scarlet discovered when we came home from Pennsylvania are starting to be weaned, someone needs to feed them three or four times a day, and Scarlet’s back at school full-time and working part-time. So to me will fall the early afternoon feedings, and an extra dinner-time feeding for the tiny black female who’s skin and bones. I’m rather partial to that one, so I’ll do my best to make sure she gets that extra meal and grows nice and plump with a shiny coat.

Still popping vitamin C, and drinking lots. I’ve given up on herbal teas; just can’t take them anymore. I’m on water today. And I’m craving chocolate sooo badly…

Amused

Found more old e-mail as I was cleaning up my hard drive. For a while about two or three years ago, I signed off with “The Jovial Warrior Sorceress”, and my sig was “Leather will do just fine”. It’s a bit out of character, yes, but that was half the fun. It came from the wonderful, time-wasting Lee’s (Useless) Superhero Generator, which served as a source of amusement for my circle of friends for a week or two.

The next time I have to create a D&D character, none of this patiently developing a character and a background for me. Nope, it’s going to be The Jovial Warrior Sorceress, levelling enemies with a quip, a rapier, a fireball and a heroic laugh. “Hold, miscreant! Have at thee! What, my hearty allies? Wearied already? A round of song, then! Ninety-nine dumb orcs charging the Wall, ninety-nine orcs at the Wall; strike one down, spread him around, ninety-eight dumb orcs charging the Wall!”

I really think I should go back to bed.

Taking Form

It’s official! The cold has developed a fever, making this the Cold Package with Extra Bonus Material.

When I have a cold, I know what makes me worse: soda, dairy, and so forth. Sugar and milk just feed my sore throat with bad stuff and it gets worse. So of course I’m craving cola and such. Instead, I’m drinking herbal tea and bouillon. It’s odd how you can fall into a routine without realising it; when I open my laptop to write, I gather my loose change and I walk to the depanneur to pick up a can of Vanilla Coke, then come back and sit down and whip off however many pages my mind decides to create and/or my fingers can keep up with (whichever comes first). I want to write today, but Vanilla Coke is right out. I suppose I could buy a ginseng drink or something, but it’s just not the same.

On the much more exciting news front, my husband came home from working on someone’s balcony yesterday, and after chatting with his a-bit-out-of-it wife, he wandered into the office and didn’t come out. Now, he’s been discovering the Internet (has his own e-mail address and everything! Well, it’s big news in our world, anyway), so I figured he was on-line. When I emerged from under the afghan and left my nest in the living room to refill my teacup, I stopped in the office doorway, amazed. He wasn’t at my desk, where the computer is; he was at his own desk, where the new oil paints I bought for him on Saturday were. In fact, he had a palette out, and two brushes going, and a landscape taking form rather rapidly.

Oil paint fascinates me. I’m a watercolour person myself, so to see how oil blends so well is truly astounding. Even more astounding, however, was watching him blend two or three different paints on the palette, take the new colour, and blend it into a tree trunk, for example, on the painting. He doesn’t seem to use long strokes very often; he dabs a lot. His foliage in particular uses this technique, and catches my attention.

The whole apartment smells different too, and it took me a while to get a fix on where I recognised it from. I shared an apartment with Annika while she was doing her BFA; her room and the bedroom hallway always smelled like this. It’s the smell of creativity, and of colour, and of boldness and a moment in time.

The only problem with this fever is I’m at one remove; I feel as if I’m working under a pane of glass that separates me from the rest of the world, or a puddle that slightly distorts the sensory info that reaches me. No doubt when I re-read all this in a couple of days I’ll wonder how anyone made any sense out of it.

Stuff

I am officially sick. Right on time, too; I have an audition in four days. Nasty headache, sore throat, coughs and sneezes, the whole cold package. I’ve been feeling increasingly off all weekend, last night I slept horribly, and I’m cranky. So I’m in bed with my laptop, and when I’m done here I’ll curl up with A.S. Byatt’s Possession, the rest of my pot of peppermint tea, and furry hot water bottles that purr.

Well, well, well – Chretien is going to take Kyoto to Parliament. About bloody time. HRH will be pleased – that was going to be his next rant. Along with building a big air-proof dome over the Kyoto-scorning US, he was saying something about short-term sacrifice on the part of companies to ensure a long-term benefit of saving the planet.

I printed out the sixty-five pages of the story that I’ve been working on, and I read it all at one go last night. It’s rather gratifying to see that things flow. I even found some lovely unintentional foreshadowing and dramatic irony that was unplanned but which works quite nicely. For things like that to happen I have to be in the right headspace, and evidently I’m occupying it on a regular basis. There are snags, and I need to smooth things out here and there, substitute other words, but all in all, I like it.

I mentioned that I’m reading Possession again. In only three chapters an innumerable amount of references to thesis-related concepts that I didn’t find while I was doing it have leapt out at me. I must have been so focused on the particular angle I was after that I filtered out these other ideas, which is good for what I was doing at the time, of course. Now, though, it makes me want to write another paper. Hmm. Maybe the use of research and the character of History in Byatt’s work. Angels & Insects would be perfect for that, both the title novella and its focus on natural history, and its sibling novella about mediums and reaching into the spirit world for news of past family and lovers. So would Virgin in the Garden, which is all about staging a Renaissance-related drama.

Uh-oh. Do I sense another project coming on?

I have been taken with the whim of attempting to publish something; perhaps I’ll focus on an academic periodical and see what happens.

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Oyez, oyez!

His Majesty’s web mistress is pleased to announce that The King of Canada now has his very own blog, serving as weekly updates in his quest to restore Canada to a monarchy.

Serve us well and you will be rewarded when he is victorious. (I think MLG has a lock on the Buckingham position, but there are several other places about this court in exile that are equally exciting career opportunities.)

I honestly didn’t mean to announce it for another couple of days, since I literally only founded it as he was making dinner last night, but the timing in the conversation at MLG’s housewarming last night was too perfect. Speaking of the housewarming, is’t possible that JD didn’t get a picture of the Mediaeval Baebes who were in attendance?

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Got my new birth certificate in the mail! My husband handed me an envelope from the Prince Edward Island Department of Vital Statistics, and I bent it back and forth; hmm, no hard laminated certificate. Maybe they’ve rejected my application for a certificate; maybe I don’t exist?

I tore it open. They’ve changed the format. (After thirty-one years – keeping up with the times, you know.) Now it’s a slip of bank-note paper with all the pertinent info on it, in a plastic sleeve. On the back it says “Void if altered or laminated.”

I liked my laminated birth certificate. It was sturdy. Oh, well.

Now the missing one can show up any time.

Here, birth certificate; I’ve got a friend for you to play with. Here, certificate, certificate, certificate….