Rest and Thoughts of ceilings...

Thursday was a day for sitting very very still and reading a little bit after my impulsive walking binge. The kind of day that found me face down in a new book I’d heard about from the tour guide on Wednesday. It’s called St. Louis Architecture: Three Centuries of Classic Design and was published (in Australia, natch) in 2010 as one in the American City series. There has been and continues to be a certain amount of tearing down and building up and changing use of streets and neighborhoods, it is a part of the life of every city and every life form. (Understanding, of course that in the case of something like a guinea pig: the streets and neighborhoods are allegorical in and not meant to suggest any literal reading of the anatomy of such a critter.)

I’ve also got a book about St. Louis that came out in 2000, I think, and while it is a much more broadly based study of buildings and churches, its focus is not the architecture as it relates to the study of that field. There is an enormous amount about the history of places in the city that is learned by looking at the buildings that stand there. I’ve had difficulty getting into the book because it moves around a bit and the maps, while clear and showing the locations of the buildings and districts very specifically, use a numbering system that acts more as a barrier to understanding.

I have now seen pictures of the inside of the Central Library. They inspire me even more to want to wander in the relatively unpeopled stacks and lie on the floor of the delivery room to stare up at the ceiling: a thing I also want to do in City Hall, the Old Post Office and Union Station.

That wouldn’t be a bad way to plan a tour of the city, really – ceilings that you want to gaze at from a horizontal position. I can imagine scores of nattily dressed tourists sporting skorts and yoga mats covering the floor of the Old Courthouse, cameras flat on the ground, pointed up. Conversations about how to get into the Wainwright tomb to take a peek at its rarely photographed (tho incredibly gorgeous) ceiling, or the Shaw Botanical Garden Library and Museum flittering over Important Information from the tour guide. I think I want to be that tour guide. You’d have to be trustworthy and inspire a sense of fearlessness in your temporary flock. Hm. I wonder if I can find an app for that…

Today there was rest, for tomorrow there is much to explore and to see and ponder.

Oh, but new favorite thing: Cats landing on the smooth table surface with all the grace of an albatross not in flight. Ethel slid on her haunches (surprised as all get out), knocked a book off the table, knocked several breakable things (which did not break) into each other and then careened right into her brother sitting on the windowsill. Within nanoseconds they were both on the other side of the apartment.

They meant to do that.

Bits from Sunday pm

It is not so easy to recapture the silence and movement of yesterday in the chatter and chairs of this afternoon, but I will do my best.

The television is not where it will be, though it is also not where it was one step closer to ready for the summer's heat escaping from the sunny funk in the kitchen that was the whole reason to move the television in the first place.

Every goal must be achieved through a series of steps as I reconnect with my home after it or I have been ill, usually both together and similarly. The funk must be identified and eliminated, it does violence to my healing senses from its invisible perch lately placed somewhere near the kitchen sink. It could be from the dishes.

The dishes get done last.

In order to move the cookbooks and the cat food and the table, the television, DVD and VCR must take space from the radio, writing desk, telephone and lavender which have been dislocated to the chairs for the duration as Pledge wipes make their way and the broom sweeps up litter and I mop the rugs of cat hair, glad to be free of the vacuum that sits in the almost way and has and will until I get around to letting go. Sets of altar decorations (for every horizontal surface is an altar) move together and are cleaned together and rearranged as I make plans to do this again in two months, only hoping that my apartment tetris skills allow me the mental space to work again, tho I have the had space for days and have not used it but for sleeping. The refrigerator top, the table top, the boards and blocks and stove-top and burners and door handles the hyphens between movement.

And all of this accompanied by dancing and a grace the felines do not acknowledge to my face. It is the grace of knowing where everything is or will be, how to get there and how to make things happen. The invisible part of housework and homemaking and living in rooms defined so specifically. This is my little cave and I the bear, groggy and dreaming and unwilling to tolerate tripping over shit in my way and tired of litter under my feet and in the cats' fur and sensing the absence of friends and comfortable surroundings.

The sunlight in rays inaccessible to small cats leaves the kitchen warm, spreads the smell of something. The discomfort is no longer bearable.

I have not been well enough to dance through the mess, cleaning. Today is different, legs and back and arms and focus working, though slowly, and the sink is clean, the stove white, the trash out and in the late evening I find quiet in the chair too large for the living room, and my home settles.

The funk is still present.

The dance continues.

The obligatory blog about cats

Since I live in a house with five cats, it had to happen at some point. Words must be written about them. Here it is:

Day before yesterday, I walked into my room to see Street curled up on my bed. It is not unusual for there to be a cat curled up on my bed, but things have been odd lately and the adult cats have been avoiding me, so seeing one of them making herself comfortable in my room was a nice surprise. I turned on the light and realized why she was there.

The look of death on her face should have been enough, but then I saw her tail. Still wet from the flea dip. And the giggling started. She was not pleased with me and trounced out of the room throwing me a nasty glare over her shoulder as if to say that she was not speaking at me anymore ever. The insult was somewhat mitigated by the presence of Ethel crashed out on the blue down throw, looking for all the world like a very fuzzy dead weevil larva (of the rhinocilus persuasion)(which are just cute) and snoring. She snores. At three months.

I went down to the kitchen to find some high calorie gut-fill and found Street on the bottom step, watching me very carefully. I know that it's been some months since her dad had to bathe her to get all of the alley grease off of her loveliness and fur, and I think she was hoping she could forget it forever. I picked her up and we sat down and she chirped and balanced on her paws, refusing to get comfortable and shaking. She left my lap shortly thereafter and I suggested that she go pout somewhere else. (We haven't spoken much since then. Some quick morning rubs, but nothing lasting.)

Ethel sleeps like the dead and takes very long naps. With my food in hand, I shut my bedroom door, turned off the lights and prepared to commit to my daily afternoon rest period (still a must-do after everything. not so bad, but somewhat annoying). She rolled around some, stopped snoring for a minute, sort of opened her eyes and then burrowed back down, nose in paws, back feet curled, tail all kinds of everywhere, giving off the faint odor of flea dip.

I ate and snuggled into my sheets for my nap when there came the sound of someone else snuggling in somewhere. Looking over at the source of the sound, I noticed a bulge in the blanket that is draped over the folding chair in the corner. The bulge was on the floor and very small and moving slightly. My eyesight likes to make things move when they oughtn't, but not that much, so I investigated and found a damp, sleeping Novice.

Novice doesn't sleep as long or as hard as Ethel does, so her time on the blue down blanket was restful, but hardly the repose her sibling got. She slept nearer to my knees and watched every movement Ethey made as she snored and rolled and stretched and dreamt and snored some more. Novice and I are finally developing a relationship with purring, so I tend to leave her be mostly and let her come to me as she is comfortable (not including the requisite kitten-grabbing attacks, of course).

By the time it was time to go out that evening, they were both sound asleep, Novice in a gray and white ball of mostly dry fluff, Ethel under the throw, front leg stretched out, holding the blanket to her.

I caught sight of Wigs on Anne's bed, licking at her tail. I didn't see Boris at all until last night. I have decided to call him Boris. Now he is called Booger, so I don't think it will be all that difficult a transition for him as he likely reacts mostly to the "b" sound. He didn't seem all that affected by the bathing process, but if you had your own balls to lick all day long, would you?

well, i’m home again

Before anyone asks - I thought it was gas. How often does an appendix burst in a person in one lifetime anyway? Once. Max. Scared the fuck out of me and not looking forward to doing it again. Ever. Hospital food sucks. Except for the Jello. I love Jello.

Doctors were nice. The ER doc was impressed that I had held out against the pain for so long. Go me for being stubborn and cheap.

Spent 4 nights in hospital. Then 3 nights at UlaRobie's. Now am home. Pushed myself too far yesterday in a fit of being really pissed off and not wanting to be anywhere near this place. Today I am tired and frustrated that there was so little sleep in the night times.

Now there is a lovely feline on my lap. She is confused about why I keep moving her paws from certain places. She has grown into such a lovely cat, 'specially now that her face has lost its kitten roundness. I enjoy that she's as demanding about pets as she is some days. Truly cat-like behavior. The other adult cat is crashed out on the landing upstairs. She's back to looking like a snake with no scales. She's mostly crashed out all the time, unless she's meowling for no good reason.

I was going to head down to the library today (bus passes make us happy) but I am tired and would rather stay home and play with fabric and lie about and try to remember why I wanted to come back here in the first place.