Lucy's Spleen

Burn It To The Wick

Lieutenant Dieter Dengler has turned out to be a very nice fish. He's a peppy little guy and I have him sort of "trained" (you could almost call it that) to know that food will follow when I/someone approach/es his bowl. So whenever I walk up to check him out he goes ape shit swimming really fast back and forth at the side of the bowl and gaping his mouth like MAW MAW MAW. Thus I am able to semi-deceive myself that he is capable of such cognitive feats as facial feature recognition and, you know,  enthusiasm and such so I can pretend that we have a mutually adoring relationship. I've tried to make giving him a happy home my chief preoccupation; I check on him first thing in the morning and last thing before I go to bed at night, and when I come home from work I call out to him, like so, "YOO-HOO! DEE-ter DEH-ngler!" and then reward him with food for losing his mind while I coo and drool over him as though he has any awareness of it. 

You can see I'm well overdue for getting a dog, already.

Anyway thanks to Chris for her suggestion of including a title in Lt. Dieter Dengler's name; Stan seems to have a lot more respect for the little guy now that he holds rank. Also my mom says to tell that his theme song is this old military running cadence that my Grandpa always used to sing, only substituting the words, "dingle dangle," with you know what. I'll let you in on something, though, his real theme song is this one:

P.S. Can I just say thanks Ann Wilson in this video for helping me establish an Official Hair Goal 2008? Now I know exactly what I want to be aiming for.

P.P.S. Sorry I don't have a great picture to show of Lt. Dieter Dengler. I've been trying to photograph him but he's too swimmy.

Let's Just Say I'm Starting Low and Planning to Work My Way Up the Vertebrate Subphylum

Ever since the loss of our two ladybugs, Jumbo and [the other one], I have been thinking nonstop about getting a pet. I've been thinking how I need a living thing around the house to take care of. Something besides Stan. A small thing. This weekend the urge really peaked and all I could think about was how I really needed a pet; how much more settled I would feel and how my life would be improved if we were a pet-having household with a little angibal to care for, now. So yesterday after work I mounted an expedition across the newly dangerous black ice-slick sidewalks of Porter Square and (after a rather anti-climactic experience in what is possibly the dingiest, most dismal pet store run by the most depressing pet store owners ever) came home with someone very special-

His name's Dieter Dengler.
Unless we decide on a different name. Those who are clever at devising names for fish and such (you know who you are) are welcome to enter submissions for consideration. It seems like it would be fun to have a contest or prize or something, but I think we've learned that I'm not so great with the follow-though in this type of event. Plus I'm not hating the name I've come up with, yet, so let's say the contest is this: anybody who comes up with a fish name that is undeniably better than Dieter Dengler may win the prize of naming a fish from somebody's blog one time.

I will furnish a few facts about Dieter to abet your creative processes:

• Dieter is small, with a rakish dorsal  fin.
• He is a peppy fellow.
• His face is slightly asymmetrical; one of his- uh... nostril-like-flap-things* is more pronounced than the other.
• Dieter enjoys eating and... um... bobbing.
• He is a goldfish.

Okay? Good luck everybody!

* Snout-scale abnormalities? Bacterial infestations? Scabrous lesions?

I Really Should Get a Dog or Something

We have ladybugs.

I don't know if they are ladybugs actually (they are the orange kind), but there are two of them and I love them and I hope they are eating the drosophila* that live in our houseplants. One of the ladybugs is big-ish and one is smaller so naturally I have been maintaining a scientifically unfounded belief that the bigger one is a guy. I know I'm liable to cause a stir among feminist entomologists the world over, but "he" just seems more rugged and masculine to me somehow.

The ladybugs have been residing on the ceiling fan/light fixture combo in our kitchen, so I'm claiming it's for this reason that I have not replaced the light globe on said fixture that Stan broke a couple of months ago by running into it with his head. In truth, I have already not replaced the globe for a long time now, instead substituting a huge ridiculous paper lantern on which I now bonk my head all the time. But recently, when I would otherwise have finally replaced the glass globe, I have not done so because I love the ladybugs and want to preserve the sanctity of their indoor habitat. I've liked seeing the sweet little shadows they make from the inside of the lantern sometimes, I've liked watching their balancing act along it's ribs and the way they sometimes settle in to the curves of the brass ring of the fan-pull.

Over the past couple of days, however, the smaller, lady ladybug has gone wandering. For a while every time I entered the kitchen I did so on tiptoe and doubled over at the waist, scanning the floor for bumps or crawling and terrified of hearing a crunch underfoot. She matches the auburn laminate flooring perfectly and I would so hate to squish her by accident. Last night I scooped her up and put her on the windowsill; she was still in the exact same spot when I came home this evening, so, figuring she may be disconsolate over being separated from her mate, I tried to insinuate her back onto the paper lantern. She was not at all receptive to this proposal, preferring to scurry down my sleeve rather than face the prospect of moving back in already. 

I certainly hope this situation isn't owing to a domestic dispute. I know that in nature these types of relationships can take a gory turn and it would not sit well with me to have any member of this loving household eaten by another.

Anyway I hope they can make up so she can return to her warm little home in the ring-pull of the ceiling fan, but in the meantime I wound up settling on one of the kitchen plants as as good a place as any to install the little ladybug to keep her off the floor. The plant is infected with a mild node-plague but I figure if nothing else it's a safe place for her to cool out for a while, you know- get her ducks in a row, decide what she really wants from life- and if she manages to take the infestation down a notch while she's in there you won't see me complaining.

Thank God this project will soon be over.

* "Note sexcombs male insert"

Eaux I am so bored with writing about myself. I can't believe how complainingly I am making it through this month. I was going to write that day nineteen is like the Wednesday of November, but then I realized that I have felt that way through all of the -teen days, making the point proportional, but uninteresting. Stan and I are both struggling with our writing tonight; he's been working on a paper for the past couple of days and can't get enough distance from it to discern what it needs at this point, kind of like how I can't see past the fact that I'm blogging now more for the sake of achieving this wacky ambition than for the pleasure of writing.

Of course I could fall to the next obvious option which would be writing an entry for x365, but my bad mood has persisted through today meaning I lack the compassion required in writing about other people. Thus I'm left with writing boringly about my boring thoughts on how boring my writing is. Have you stopped reading yet? (Now Stan is listening to his laptop read his paper aloud to him in its robot voice. Speaking of boring...) It's hard to want to reveal your thoughts when you're feeling mentally stunted. (Now the robot voice is swearing and singing about Santa "Klowss," it's no longer boring, but speaking of mentally stunted...)

You know what I need? I need to get outside for a while, commune with nature and whatnot. That must be why I've got the dog lust going on so bad, it's because I'm lacking the Holy and Unaffected in my life. I'm spending too much time cooped up under the fluorescents with a bunch of civilized types concerned about what to buy next and what other people are thinking about them. I've been in this frame of mind before, but I note that I didn't get there last year and I credit the farm with all its funny animals and the kids I encountered in my work at the Youth Brigade. What's missing from my life is rawness and unselfconsciousness and innocence. These things aren't easy to come by in the big city.

I will show some photos of the kinds of things I mean:

I am a participant in NaBloPoMo.

 

I'm in an inexplicably bad mood tonight. It was a beautiful day, I had a nice chat with a friend (my only friend here besides Stan) over coffee at a new place I liked, everything is generally awesome, yet I am grouchy. Being a very logical and non-compulsive person (snort), I am convinced that getting a dog is the solution to my bad mood. The way I'm looking at it, this grumpitude is a potentially permanent and life-affecting state that can only be ameliorated by immediate therapeutic intervention in the form of a companion animal (one besides my boyfriend I mean). Of course I also believe that this has nothing to do with the fact that I had a dream about Lucy last night and have been missing her all day since. Nothing whatever. Let's look at a picture of her, shall we?

Shucks.

In other news, I got a better conditioner and changed my part this weekend and this has revolutionized the way I'm experiencing my current haircut.

Another bloggie day down.

I am a sane and sensible participant in NaBloPoMo.

Dispatch from the Department of Daring Animal Rescues

True story, told in the present tense but which actually happened like two hours ago:

So I'm walking on the farm by our house, on my way home from a venture out to try to get a good picture of the mountain Stan is climbing (I failed, the air's too thick and nasty from fires to get a good shot), when I hear a noise from the woodland like a bit of aluminum siding had come loose from one of the trees or something. Bird Nerd that I am, (and knower of the fact that there's no aluminum siding in the woodland, silly!) I naturally assume the noise is, you know, a bird, so I move in closer to investigate. Upon closer auditory inspection I realize that the clatter is actually from the gutter. It is a gutter clatter, if you will. Only this is not really a gutter, per se, but more like an irrigation ditch; they have those all over the farm. (In fact, the whole area behind our house is one, only not a ditch, exactly, more like a bog or a marsh, but anyway...) I look in the gutter expecting to see, like, a wounded chicken or something,* but instead there is a- what? A fish. A trout. Wait, no. A hammerhead! There's a tiny little hammerhead shark flopping around in the barely-still-muddy ditch trying to wiggle enough water over it's gills so that it can breathe. Except this is Utah, so that must be a catfish. A gigantic, slithery catfish that is splashing mud everywhere and looks like it could take your finger off, too boot. I'm a little squeamish, but I figure, "Poor catfish, I know I'd hate to drown," so I gather a couple of my wits together and slide into the ditch, sinking into deep mud and trying not to slip altogether and fall teeth-first onto a collossal catfish. Steadyish at the bottom, I reach for him and- ugh!- with a spray of mud he wriggles and flips over, freaking my hell out completely.

"Whew, that was a close one," I think.

Immediately after which I think, "Close to what? It's a fish. Get a grip."

I grab the catfish by his tail, slip, lose him, grab him again- more firmly this time- and scramble out of the ditch. (Now at this point some of you may be thinking- terrific! Fried catfish supper! At least that's what I thought for a moment, but you folks don't realize how filthy the farm is. That catfish has been sitting on the bottom of some of the most nasty, mingin'-est, god-awful Goose Crap Stew you can imagine. To cook and eat him would be, at best, unsanitary.) So I've got him, and I run toward the river but- whoops! He doesn't like running! He writhes and I lose my grip and drop him on his head- shit! I grab him up again and make for the river at a quick, yet steady, non-lurching pace. He seems to find this soothing; either that or he's dead already. I walk and hold him suspended upside-down and I worry- he's dead, surely by now he's dead- but at last we've reached the creek- hurray! I do hope he's not dead. I'll throw him in here- wait, no- over here, damn indecision, we're talking about life or death here! And then- aha- this spot will do. I drop him in the water.

The catfish swims away (decidedly alive!) to continue his crummy existence as bottom-feeder of the squalid shallows and I head for home, slightly shaken, but joyful and proud.**

Th' End. 

* Believe me, there is good reason on this farm to expect that at any moment you may be confronted by a wounded chicken. Or an out-and-out maimed and eaten one, for that matter.

** Prouder by the moment that I didn't try to eat that loathsome sucker.

Spring

We've been having perfect spring weather around here lately; warm, but not too warm; sunny, with a little rain thrown in, gorgeously lit at every hour of the day and very romantic. Everywhere I look I see animals going about together in pairs- the Canada geese fly over in pairs instead of vees these days; there are two horses on each pasture at the stables to the north of our home; the birds at our feeder- doves, quail, house finches and goldfinches- arrive together in matched sets, the male goldfinches seeming to grow a brighter yellow each day as they wine and dine their lady friends on Black Oil sunflower seeds. There's one male and one lady sheep in each pen over at the farm (I wonder if we might see a couple of little lambs over there soon), and there are two new little piggies I've been admiring greatly as well. They happen to be twin brother piglets, but hey- to each his own in this romantic season, no? A couple of lucky male creatures keep harems. Our neighborhood pheasant, Kevin, is one, and there is a new male doing a lot of puffing up and strutting in the formerly ladies-only turkey hutch at the farm. I'll show you his picture- he's at once splendid and revolting, see there?

I can't decide which is more impressive- the angry neck warts or the flaccid nose flap. Here's one of him all floofed up for the hens:

I think it's awesome how even though he has a number of crumpled, broken tail feathers he's still proudly fanning those suckers out like there's no tomorrow. I picture him like an oblivious hiccupy drunk, relentlessly coming onto all the women trying to avoid him outside the bar, letting them know that, "This here turkey is one fiiine mother fucker."

Here are the piggies:

They were cute when I took this picture, but they've doubled, possibly tripled in size since they came to the farm and are growing more disgusting by the moment.

Lastly (and bestly), one of the mares over at the stables on the other side of our house has had a new little foal. He is gawky and gangly and lurches around with his long legs and pointy face and little beard and caterpillar tail. I can hardly get enough of him. Look:

In college tour news, Stan has visited three of our top picks in the Midwest and has two trips east coming up in the next week, then (yikes!) the official decision must be made. We've been leaning toward settling on a university in what I like to call a "major urban metropolis," so I'm trying to make the most of my farmy weekends while I can!

Awww...

Springly Dogtime

This post about my Thursday with Grace D's dog will be mostly all pictures and almost no text, but click the little pictures to enbiggen them! Some are very pretty! Really!

First we did lying in the sun. Malcolm likes this part and he is very good at it.

See how he likes to coordinate his toys with his outfit? Stylish!

Next, we went out for a walk, following my usual route through Arana Gulch, past the upper and lower harbors, and down to the beach. Most of the Gulch is actually a field,

 

and while we were walking through it a hawk began doing slow, deliberate circles above us.

I didn't want Malcolm to worry that the hawk might be looking for an adorable stub-tailed lunch, so we hid out for a minute beneath my favorite tree in all of Santa Cruz which is this one.

Along the path to the harbor I asked Malcolm to pose among the poppies.

Seems it is truly finally spring now because flowers were going all over the place.

Malcolm likes 'em!

Ever since I started walking to the harbor I have become obsessed with seabirds. My camera isn't equipped to photograph them properly but anyway here are two with their reflections.

 
As far as I can tell Malcolm is indifferent to birds, but he does always stop to give big lovesome hugs to every single dog/person who notices and will pet/play with him.

At the exit/entrance to the harbor is a lighthouse. The lighthouse is on a jetty, and the jetty is supported by these four-pointed Things:

What ARE they? The jetty is made up of regular big boulders on one side and, on the other, these four-pointed things, looking haphazardly dropped about like a bunch of mammoth concrete jumpin' jacks. Hooligans paint on them, lots of flowers and peace signs and other tacky hippie shit. Also they're all mysteriously stamped with numbers on one "end," as you can see in this closer-up.

I've been wanting to tell about this dredge and why it's in the middle of the harbor, but loading all these pictures has taken FOREVER and in the meantime I've become rather tipsy. So, there it is; maybe I'll write about it some other time.

Malcolm doesn't know wut the jumpin' jacks things are about, either.

Here's me with the lighthouse with my sunglasses coming off and Malcolm with a boatnabarge (get it? boat 'n' a barge? you guessed it- i am drunk now! this is some Class A blogging, buddies! you can tell cause it's makin' up words time!)

 

Okay, let's see. Finishing up, then.

I, Emily Elizabeth, took the following exceptional photograph of Malcolm the Valiant at the lighthouse which I effing love more than life itself.

Then we saw more flowers, then we got a burger at Foster's "Old Fashion" Freeze Ice Milk Dinners Burgers, which has my favorite sign in all of Santa Cruz,

because getting burgers is what we do on our dates (but I'm lying a little bit because actually I got a fish sandwich this time!) Then we went home and played with toys and had rubs,

and I began to have a chill because I had gotten sunburned like an idiot.

Then it became night so we snuggled. The End!

(P.S. Also it was a beautiful spring day and I miss having a dog. Okay.)

I'm busily doing the same thing as yesterday, with the sun and the laptop, only today instead of hanging out with Malcolm I'm kicking it with our drummin' neighbor's cat, Jasper.

Jasper is a cat possessed of many quirky and distinctive characteristics, but the only thing you really must know upon meeting him is, "PLEASE DON'T FEED HIM." Which is why I have to keep the screen closed while we are kicking it together because otherwise he'd come bombing in, make for the kitchen, and eat me out of house and home. Also because Jasper is of a temperament consistent with other orange cats I have known, in that he will be all alluring and come-hitherish but as soon as I make a move to pet him he'll always sticks his claws into me. Also because I'm allergic to cats and I just know that if this cat comes in the first thing he'll do will be to lie on my pillow. Make that the second thing he'll do, after he's finished raiding the refrigerator.

Normally I'd feel pretty ashamed  about lying around like this and not cleaning the house or working out or anything else to feel more productive. But today my cramps are so bad that, earlier, when I got out of bed and literally had to CRAWL to the bathroom, I decided I could be absolved today of any pretense of accomplishment. So I've got it set up even more comfily than yesterday in here, with my whole duvet on the floor and everything I might need- water, phone, snax, camera- within easy reaching distance so I can lie here and get skin cancer and blog with impunity. And kick it with Jasper, of course.

Wherein I Loll and Muse

MAN has it ever been raining over here on this coast. It rained so much and for so many days that all I felt I could do was stumble through the many grey days in little lurches and starts between long sessions of lolling around the house musing. It was just too troubling and wet and bothersome to try to go out anywhere. I figured I should make some use of all my staying-at-home-musing time, so I took a bunch of pictures of myself in the mirror, including a few experimental arm-extension photos attempting to capture the depth of my lolling, yea the very essence of my musing.

Here's one in which I appear somewhat bemused, rather than musing:

There. This one turned out somewhat more muse-ish:

I muse in profile:

Here's a picture of me with our plant:

Why yes, that is my ugly bedspread! And behind it is my ugly carpeting! Bring on the emmer-effing rain, my friend! For the ugliness is all around us, can't you see it? May as well loll and muse resignedly, like so:

I am no longer amused:

So I did this for a while, and then the sun came out, and suddenly- ta da! I'm leaving the house again, taking my walks- I'm telling you, one sunny afternoon in this place and you forget you ever saw a cloud in your life- it's that beautiful.

What's more, we got to have a sleepover with MALCOLM! We fetched and we wrestled and a couple of times Malcolm got so excited/nervous that he couldn't help but whiz a little,  then we settled in for a delightsome night of snuggling, thusly:

(Thanks again to Grace for the loan of the sweetness!)

Now I will do product promotion:

Say, folks, have you ever been blue? Lolled around and mused like a highschooler? I know I have. I used to muse and loll for days, but then I discovered yerba mate. You can drink it from a gourd! This popular botanical formulation is said to be second* only to cocaine in the therapeutic areas of appetite reduction, getting cranked, having a good mood and, always a favorite, shitting!

[cue children's voices: "Thank you, Latin America!"]

Whether you're dropping a dress size, or waiting out a wrist-slittingly rainy season, yerba mate will give you a BOOST! So what are you waiting for? Try yerba mate- today!

* A distant second.