lizzielou.com

… is to open a restaurant called “I Forget the Name of It”. That way, my sister will always know where it was she went for lunch, as long that that is the only place she goes.

Someone will have to make a movie about it too, also called “I Forget the Name of It”. Obviously. Then, because of it’s great success, it will also have to be made into a television or streaming series. “Hey! that new show is on Netflix, ‘I Forget the Name of It’ and it was reviewed really well.”

Spent a lovely afternoon delighting in the company of my spouse. Then we went to the symphony. Like fancy pants (wearing casual pants)!

I have just discovered the joy of reading femslash fan fiction that has been run through Google Translate. Honestly, I wish I could just copy and past the whole thing here because it is incredibly confusing and mindnumbingly awful and just so hilarious. (I feel compelled to say this refers to the translation, as the story itself is actually kinda sweet.) Some phrases are really bad, but so bad they’re good, and I really wish I had written them myself. Here are some of those choice bits translated from Italian:

• They walked up to the bedroom, never taking their lips off.
• A moan more intense than the others exploded from the mouth of the blackberry, a sign that had reached the maximum pleasure.
• She squeezed the sheets tightly when the other’s tongue seized, overbearingly, her femininity.
• The heat that until recently was concentrated in a single point, exploded domineering making her moan without demeanor.
• Her lips with impenetrable lust met with the lips of blondes.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go fan myself.

Harriet is the cattiest cat we have ever had (maybe besides poor, dumb Monster). The reason her name is Harriet isn’t just because she’s hairy. She also looks like a Harriet. She looked like a little-bit-grumpy, slightly paranoid, certainly snobby, old lady named Harriet… as a KITTEN. Her previous person –what’s the name for that? it’s not her birth mama; it’s kinda her foster parents; or maybe her mother’s midwife? pimp? whatever– agreed that this was a fitting name for her.

I forget how Lolly found her (I was brought in to the whole process rather late), but soon we found ourselves in the car driving almost two hours out to some farm to fetch her. Then she screeched the entire ride back. (Harriet, not Lolly.) It was dark and raining. And screechy.

Her assimilation into the household went pretty smoothly. What’s not to like about a confident, curious fuzzball? Even our jaded old queens (that would be everyone except Franklin) were well behaved. Franklin and Harriet soon fell in love. They are now known as “The Longbodys” Mr. Franklin P. Longbody and his wife, Harriet. Their union was a whirlwind; no time to register at the PetCo or the Mud Bay Granary. Someone else fell in love too. Not immediately, because that love was unrequited at first, but after a while…

Lolly and Harriet sitting on the couch
S-m-o-o-c-h-i-n-g
First comes love, then comes Harriet taking up a full third of the bed as Lolly spoons her and I am all alone and cold on my remaining sliver of bed.

:::insert deadpan face emoji here:::

I try to give Harriet some love too. Her response to which is almost always a high-pitched, and rather nasal sounding, “Neeeeeeeewwwww.” Then she stares at me from across the room with her big eyes and her little pouty face. She is so totally and completely Lolly’s cat. So much so, that Harriet dismissively refers to me as: “Mommy’s Roommate.”

Now this: #mylifeinblackandwhite >> 7 days 7 photos. No humans. No explanations.

Being short on time for posting today, I checked into my drafts folder and I found a document that simply stated:

“Anything would be more dignified than tickling her piglet.”

Apparently there was a story there that I have since forgotten. What a shame!

It’s the weekend before the next election day.

Before I decided to attempt writing again, I had been looking back over some of my old blog posts. I read about my worries and my complaints about the then-current state of affairs, and candidates, and right-wing regressive haters, and threats to our democracy. It’s in no way a unique observation these days, but: jesusfuckingchrist, I had no idea how shitty things could really get.

Regarding the content of whatever posts I would have written in 2016, it couldn’t be more obvious. Trump is evil – literally, biblically, rhetorically, physically. All of the disgust and fear and hopelessness his campaign and treasonous administration has engendered is something I feel everyday. I know I’m not alone. If you’re reading this, you probably feel the same. If you’re reading this and you don’t feel those things… Well, brother, you are in the wrong place. “But LizzieLou!” dear reader might exclaim, “maybe you can help show that brother the error of his ways, the wrongness of his thinking. Maybe he is here, on the blog of an old angry lesbian, trying to learn and grow!” My answer is: bullshit. It’s been nearly three years of this shithead and the twin shitshows of incompetence and greed that surround him. Those that support him are doubling down. I’ve written them all off and I have no time, and no heart, to suffer fools.

So there’s another election looming. I vote. I write. I send money. And I am actively stuffing down my dread. I am expecting that the spineless, hypocritical, bigoted Republican party will maintain control of both chambers of Congress. I am also expecting that megalomaniacal wanna-be-dictator will get re-elected in 2020. I stopped watching “The Handmaids Tale” because we’re going to be living that hell soon enough.

Bleak?

Yup.

I won’t deny it. But I will ignore it.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming: cat pics, doodles, superheroes, sexy ladies, goofballs, and snacks.

As I’m working at home this morning, and sitting through my mandatory online training in Prevention of Sexual Harassment, I made a side note to let my wife know that all of the following are indeed welcome in this particular office: touching, hugging, jokes, comments, innuendoes, suggestive looks, gestures, and photos.

Where to begin. Again.

Something might have me writing again, or so it feels at the moment, and I’ll get to that eventually. But first: how about a quick summary of what my life has been since :::checking last regular posting::: November 2012? Six years. Seems like forever! Seems like a day.

2013. This was a difficult year. Work was unsteady due to several grants ending. I had to piece together full time employment from several different sources, some less fulfilling than others, but all were similar coordinating and program management sorts of tasks that have been my calling since 2000. Ten years into our mortgage and some mounting debt started to get uncomfortable; we needed to get out of a bad line of credit that we never should have taken in the first place. The good news was that our house appraised for a bit more than we purchased it, and our refi with the credit union went smoothly and we’ve been in good shape ever since. (Fuck you Countrywide. Fuck you Wells Fargo. Fuck you Bank of America.) Whew. In April we lost Gomez – the Epitome of Uncomplicated Good, and the softest softy that ever lived – and then, in October, Ashleycrumb – our fierce blind princess – both from sudden and aggressive cancers. My grief is complicated to this day. I miss them constantly. Over the summer I had sprained my ankle again, badly. Actually I sprained both at the same time: first I lurched one way, then the other, then back again, and then I was lying in the yard, my gardening implements flung away, Weezie gazing down at me from the window. “Help. Weeze, go get help.” Eventually Lolly heard my moaning and came to rescue me. So, a tough year, but there were good things too. I kept up with the knitting for a while. I did some water aerobics at the local pool with my dear Uncouth Heathen. In September, Lolly and I were legally married. We had some witnesses and an officiant, and some prepared foods brought in from Whole Foods, and voila! Married. Then in November, for my birthday, I was walking home from the bus stop in the evening and Lolly approached me with a cocktail. I had called her earlier in the day and was surprised to find her out and about in the world (all the way in SHORELINE!). She wouldn’t tell me why. The reason was in the B’Room, still in his kitty-carryall, mewing up a storm. I had seen his picture before, but Franklin was so much more adorable in person. He clambered out of the carrier, onto my boobshelf, and he’s been there ever since. You see, Little, after losing his two best Canadians, was quite sad. Lolly thought he needed a new kitten. I didn’t put up too much of a fight.

2014. Franklin grew. I kept working. Lolly kept working. I played “DISQUIET” on Words-With-Friends and scored 269 points. My mother came for her annual visit in June; we stayed local. In July – I’m sure you’ve anticipated this already – I sprained my ankle. Frankly, I don’t even remember how I did it this time, but the proof is in my photo library: an ugly, purple, swollen ankle, from several angles. I had a bangin’ vegetable garden that year, and we got a new furnace.

2015. I tore the drop ceiling out of our living room, plastered over the holes I made (badly), and painted it. Willie, our new handyman, dug up the backyard and put down a pretty patio. I started a new project at work and hired two of the most lovely young people ever, who I still see regularly and keep me optimistic for the future. No small feat, as you can well imagine. I made gluten-free croissants for Lolly. It took days. We had some visitors and some dinner guests. My garden banged out a bitchin’ crop of hot peppers. Fall came and I wallpapered the living room. Everyone got older.

2016. My sister left Moscow and moved to Seattle in the beginning of the year; she stayed with us for a few weeks before finding her own place on Capitol Hill around the corner from the building Lolly and I moved into in the summer of 2000. I had a lot of physical therapy. My mother came out for her annual visit in the summer and we played tourist again: up the Columbia Tower, around the renewed Museum of History and Industry, and out to the Cascade Mountains. Lolly discovered flowers, and the joy of growing them in our yard. I survived the primary presidential campaign season by binge watching Lost Girl and rediscovering the joy of LEGO. I did not survive the election. Lolly did. Probably because a week later she brought another kitten home for Little. Her name is Harriet. She is a Ragdoll. She is Very Plushy.

2017. The only thing I finished knitting was a pink pussy hat. Due to a fucked up foot (are you surprised?) I wasn’t able to join in the Women’s March in January, but I felt every heartbeat around the world that day. I wept. And maybe started breathing again. I kept working. Lolly kept working. All five of our cats kept living. In May we started redoing the kitchen with Willie the Handyman and his crew: floor, counter, dishwasher, sink, tiles, furniture, and painting the walls and cabinets. I am still not completely finished. In August, I stared directly into the eclipse. I went to BrickCon, just as an observer. I dressed Weezie in a Wonder Woman costume. Harriet grew.

2018. In spite of the state of the world today, and that it’s been an exceptionally hard year for Lolly, we are hanging in there. I’m going to try to NaBloPoMo this year. In order to hit all my entries, I will surely have to fill in the details on some of these events, as best I can recall, anyway. Wish me luck!

First the gull started squawking. Then the crows started shouting and assembling en masse, mobbing I suppose you’d call it. (One would think one was tossing an old chicken thigh out onto the yard but one was really inside minding her own business.) On closer inspection, there was something happening on the roof next door. A bird was molesting another bird on the steep slope. I wasn’t sure why this would make all the crows upset until I realized that it was a hawk of some kind trying to kill one of the poor pigeons that roosts up there. I think I’ve seen this hawkish bird around before. I grabbed binoculars and the crappy camera, but I was too late to catch any of the action since one of the neighbors had come outside and was making a bunch of noise on his own. A little bit later, Ocho was looking out the front window and emphatically cherping. I peaked out and that hawk was perched on the wire in front of the house. I grabbed binoculars and the crappy camera again, but again by the time I got to the front window it was gone. I went outside to the backyard to look around and there it had returned to the roof next door, perched high on the chimney. The crows were continuing to monitor the situation and swooped down to sass the hawk who clung to the roof for a while, until finally they seemed to succeed in driving it off.

The hawk had a roundish body and a long tail with stripes across it, a light colored chest with brown flecks, and yellowish feet. It had a slight resemblance to a chicken when it ran on the roof, and it’s wings were… wingish. Looking it up later I think I have identified it as a Sharp-shinned hawk.

I totally needed my camera-toting entourage!