Back in blogland

Holy smokes, apparently, I have a blog. What, you may wonder, has been occupying my time these last six months. Let me tell you.

 Each day I decide whether to work from home or drive the 35 miles to San Francisco, where I still have an office and meet the fun folks there and get a great tofu bahn mi or make the trek down the block to the food truck court, Streatfood. The cat, who I nearly snuffed out in an earlier blog post, has not only survived but is, at this very moment, sleeping with a 7 year old boy she used to hide from, under the deck -- for hours. My, how things have changed.

 I'm living full-time in Petaluma now where much of my time is spent wondering how to generate enough storage in the bathroom to offer grandma space when she arrives next weekend. I also wonder, every few hours, if the LED icicle lights were the right way to go. they also make some nice old-fashioned ceramic colored bulbs in a single string. Now, if only someone could clarify that it's more power-efficient to run a string of 300 LED bulbs at 3 watts each, or a string of 50 lights, 5 watt bulbs using your run-of-the-mill heat-inducing technology. So far, I have not been able to find a simple formula online to help guide my decisions. 

In short, I'm something like a housewife. I even have a gym membership now, and I can take classes that will help me tone my tummy, perk up my glutes (maximus, that is) and strengthen my back. I read Philippa Gregory quasi-historical bodice-rippers and Parenting magazine (which really is terrible) and the NY Times print edition because it's easier on my eyes. I've begun juicing religiously -- just stepped up to the 5lb. bags of organic carrots at Whole Foods.

 If there's one thing a small town is good for, it's learning how to relax. Work's been meandering along. Just listened to Karen McGrane's tirade on mobile content strategy, which is, in a nutshell, don't design for mobile or any form factor because that approach is just going to bite you in the rear in 6 or 18 months.

I'm also absorbing the tenants of Nancy Duarte for storytelling in Powerpoint presentations, and am starting a new project with her agency next week for which, I must add, I am being grossly underpaid. Oh freelancing. At least it doesn't cut into my yoga classes.

 I hope everyone out there is humming Christmas tunes they like, focusing on inner wealth rather than material, and is happy right where they are. For me, I'm on the hunt for a good bare root olallieberry bush. 

Happy holidays, and a good 2012 to you all. My heart goes out to all the families in Connecticut. What a terrible, terrible tragedy. Hopefully we'll learn something this weekend to help us make some sense of it all.

Suburban Delights

Here's what I love about living in Petaluma. It's a big shift from life in the big city. 1. Driveway. Two car parking, no waiting. 2. Leaving your car unlocked in the driveway 3. Warm and sunny 30 miles north of SF, and 14 miles from the Pacific. It can be 30 degrees different between Petaluma and San Francisco. 4. Garage - we sit in it, watch the kid jump on a stomp rocket, and drink a beer with the neighbors. Next stop: beer fridge for the garage 5. Public outdoor pools, 2 of em, 5 bucks pop, 2 for the short one 6. Cows - you can smell the grassy cow dung in the evening breezes, and two miles out of town they dot the lovely rolling landscape. My favorite are the shaggy Scottish ones. 7. Parking. It's everywhere. It's insane. 8. Backyard. We've got tomatoes, basil, peppers, cucumbers, fava beans, and squash. And green beans. We've also taken over the alley behind the yard, where the teenagers from the high school down the street occasionally leave soda bottles full of piss. Ahh, youth. 9. Soccer field. For teaching the 7-year-old how to trap and pass, when he really just wants to do a "big boom." 10. Quiet. Even out on bike rides around town, the decibel level doesn't get close to the trucks and horns of SF's streets. And then I go back to my little apartment in San Francisco and ride bikes to Beach Chalet for drinks. And on the way home stop at the Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibit and stumble on the Friday night celebration of the designer's work, with a turnout that included loads of french sailor striped shirts and men wearing makeup and lace-up vests. The women show of their cleavage and giant hair. A good time was had by all. And the exhibit was freaky -- the mannequins had video projects on their faces; Jean-Paul "spoke" to you in his sailor sweater, replaying an interview, and his lips moved. The mannequins cut their eyes at you and smiled. There is much to love about San Francisco. Now I need to get back to the laundry, which I dry outside, and trim the roses.

Cat-sphyxiation

At 2am last night, I woke up. The cat, Asa, a sweet little 10-pound monster who swats at my ankles and cuddles like a champ, was curled up in the crook of my left arm. I was hot, sweating like a racehorse, and needed to shift her. But when I tried to lift her, I found the blanket had wrapped around her, anchoring her tightly against my body. Half awake, I had a worry: what if she'd been suffocated by the binding comforter? I loosed the blanket, and reached sleepily around her midriff, waiting to feel the breath rise in her belly. Nothing happened. Now I'm scared. I start scratching her neck, trying to wake her. No response. She's limp. That’s it, I thought, I’ve killed the cat.

Now, lots of new parents are afraid to sleep with their babies because they’re worried they’re going to roll over and asphyxiate them in their sleep. They’re so little, you know. What studies has found is that this *never* happens. Except in one instance: when the parent (aka “smotherer”) has been drinking. This flashed through my booze-addled mind. The wicked, razor-edged justice of it doesn’t escape me. (Although it was Paul’s birthday celebration, after all. Must single women choose between their new boyfriends and their cats? 40-year-olds everywhere pray the answer is no. I’m just sure of it.)

So here I am, sweaty, now convinced I’ve tourniquetted my cat to death. I free her unresisting body from the bedcovers (damn you, Ikea, for making synthetic comforters so cheaply. They have no give!) and stretch her lifeless body out beside me. I look down at the dark shadow of her body. She’s very long, like 3 feet. Like she’s been hung from a pike. I have a hopeful thought: maybe she's not dead. She's warm-ish, anyway, and not stiff, so rigour mortis has not yet set in. Go to sleep, I think. And if the cat's still dead in the morning, you can deal with it then.

This idea almost works. I doze. Then I think of waking up, snuggling a dead cat, and start resuscitating her anew. Once, her ear flickers. Then I get her back leg to twitch. I think, she’s alive. Then I think, it could just be a nerve twitch, an autonomic reaction to physical stimuli. You hear how a corpses' hair and fingernails continue to grow, months after it's been interred. It doesn't mean there's still lifeblood in her fuzzy black body. I watch over her, undecided, still not quite able to grip the full faculties of wakefulness. Then I hear it: the telltale wheeze of a sleepy cat. Once, twice, and then a little kitty moan. She is, indeed, among the living.

And it’s true. The cat is in fact alive. She rolls over on her back in the morning, just like a live cat, being cute. She meows for her food. Jumps up on the window sill, then falls off it. She takes a piss in the litterbox. And then I have an uncharitable thought: how important is it for a cat to have consistent, uninterrupted access to oxygen, anyway? I mean, how much high-level brain activity does it take to get a cat through an average day?

Think about it. Cats do the same thing, over and over and over, without any apparent ennui or malaise, no apparent thirst for novelty except the occasional plaintive meow which might – or might not – signal a desire for some fulfillment beyond the kibble bowl or the mousie pull toy.

I love my cat dearly. You could even say, obsessively. But I’m not blind to the fact that this love could be 95% projection. That she is not, in fact, a fuzzy baby, a quasi-autonomous teddy bear, or a cherubic manifestation of my innermost child self. Sometimes she leaves bloody clawmarks in my tender white flesh.

Still, I’m glad she’s still with me, on this Saturday, the last day of March 2012. And it's not like I need her to solve Fermat's Theorum or anything. So maybe a pet that can survive just a bit of late-night swaddling is just the thing. Besides, she's super cute.

That’s all the news from Petaluma. Happy birthday, Paul!