And so it begins.

Posted on by Harmless Weirdo

The students are beginning their moving-out preparations, already having abandoned a few pieces of less-desirable and damaged furniture in the alleys, as well as on the 17th Ave NE median.

In my own alley lies the rotting hulk of a marshmallowy, cream-colored, mid-’90s leather sofa; it’s missing crucial cushions, and got soaked in the weekend’s torrential downpour. So if there was ever a chance somebody might want it?Yeah, forget it.

Good trash pickings are as yet scanty, but once the last-minute panic starts there will be an embarrassment of cast-off riches to be had. This week, I got two pillows (to be re-made into cushions for the cat beds), a nice turquoise pillow sham, a gray-and white patterned twin sheet and matching pillowcase, a beach towel (slated for the Humane Society), and a jade-green plastic serving bowl from the two-doors-down neighbors’ trash. We shall see what other treasures the coming week brings.

There ought to be a word for this.

Posted on by Harmless Weirdo

mug-of-coffee

Here we have a mug of coffee.

Never mind that Steph, its owner, is such a rebel that she’s using it for tea; it is clearly intended by its manufacturer to be a MUG OF COFFEE. It says so, all over.

So what I want to know is what this phenomenon is called–in which a manufactured object is emblazoned with words declaring one specific use, when potentially it could be used for any of a number of things.

This rather large mug (which has a nifty silicone lid) could potentially be used for any beverage. Or soup. Or chili. Or oatmeal. So why declare it a MUG OF COFFEE? Do people who might use it for coffee really need a declaration of its contents to remind them of what they are drinking? Do they really need to announce their beverage of choice for all to see?

Kitchen canisters have traditionally done the same thing. The biggest one is always labeled FLOUR. Then SUGAR. Then, usually, COFFEE and TEA. But what if you don’t bake? Or drink tea? Sure, you could put rice in the flour canister, or coffee in the sugar canister, and use the one meant for tea to hold the Splenda packets you steal from Starbucks–but why buy a set of mislabeled canisters, then? Why settle for working around someone else’s assumptions and expectations?

And that’s why I’ve never bought a set of kitchen canisters, because even if I wanted identifying text on them, the usual imposed order has nothing to do with my own preferences (which would probably be for canisters labeled COFFEE, ALMONDS, CATNIP, and HAIR TIES, in that order).

While I wasn’t blogging.

Posted on by Harmless Weirdo

About ten evenings ago, I heard a cat crying outside my front door. It took a few minutes to realize that it not only wasn’t one of my cats, but it wasn’t even a full-grown cat at all. I stepped out on the porch, and in the shadows of my neighbor’s house was a small dark blob, screaming for food and attention.

It took me two hours of patient, careful maneuvering (and some stinky wet food) to finally catch the little beast and bring her inside–only to have her outwit me the following afternoon, when she escaped through a window. After that, she was justifiably leery of me and my intentions, and wasn’t about to let me touch her. But she did seem to recognize that my yard wasn’t such a bad place to be; she spent the next two days hanging out, devouring all the food I gave her and making the acquaintance of my porch cats. She went from looking lost to looking like she was contentedly settling in.

sophie_nina_20150724

Occasionally, if I sat very still, she’d come close and check me out–only to run away if I tried anything funny.

nina_up-close_20150724

After two days of that bullshit, I borrowed a live trap. I baited it with more stinky wet food, and within five minutes she strolled right into it. Unfortunately, she was so small and skinny she didn’t weigh enough to spring the mechanism, even while standing right on the trip plate. I didn’t want her to distrust the trap, and there was nothing I could do that wouldn’t scare her away. So I just let her eat, and decided to give it another go later, once I’d rigged a means to manually spring the trap.

A piece of lath shoved through the wire did the trick; the door dropped and I finally had her. And boy, was she pissed–she stormed around, hissing at me while trying to find a way out. Then she’d stop to eat some more (I guess to fuel herself so she could enact her plan for vengeance), growling the whole time.

nina_caught_20150725

It’s been a week, and that hissy little demon has turned out to be very affectionate–though still very independent. With access to all the food she can eat, she’s growing fast as well as packing on weight; I can’t use her backbone to slice baguettes any more. My guess is that she’s about 10 weeks old right now; she weighed exactly 2 lbs. when I plopped her on the baby scale this morning.

As for where she came from, I have no idea. There have been no Lost Kitten flyers posted in the neighborhood; there was nothing when I looked on Craigslist or checked with the city shelter. I haven’t had her scanned for a microchip yet (her first vet visit is on Tuesday). But she’s so young, and only now just big enough to spay, so I doubt she’s chipped–no shelter or rescue would have adopted her out unaltered, and free kittens don’t come with microchips. So with that, I assume nobody is looking for her all that hard, and if they’re not looking for her, I’m not looking for them, so I guess he’s mine, now.

I wasn’t planning on another cat. One of my all-time favorite cats, Dexter, died of cancer at the beginning of June, and while I’m never dead-set against taking in another feline in need, I was in no rush to do it. I’d only recently brought home two fosters, and that was enough.

I’m also not a kitten person. Here on the Island of Misfit Cats, many of the residents come to me because nobody else wants them–they’re too old, have too many medical issues, are too “ugly,” are going to die soon, or just aren’t big fans of humans. I only adopt young cats if they have chronic, incurable conditions that make them unadoptable. Kittens (and healthy adult cats under five years old), generally don’t have a hard time getting adopted at the shelter I volunteer for. I could take her in, and she’d be spayed and adopted within a week. But here she is, and kitten season is going full blast, and–well, shit. Okay. She’s here, she’s happy, my cats accept her, she needs a home, and there’s not a single good reason why that home can’t be here, so she’s staying.

Her name is Nina, after a recently-deceased gorilla of my acquaintance, who was also an independent-minded lady and kind of a handful. So welcome to the Island of Misfit Cats, little Nina; may your stay be a long and happy one.

Vocabulary lesson: petrichor.

Posted on by Harmless Weirdo

I never knew there was a word for the smell of the earth after the first rain on dry ground. But this morning I learned that yes, in fact there is: petrichor, derived from the Greek petra (stone) + ichor, the “blood” of the Greek gods. Wikipedia has more to say on its origins (which are fascinating).

And it’s a fitting word to learn today of all days, following the first little bit of rain we’ve had after weeks of heat and dryness.

Setting the tone.

Posted on by Harmless Weirdo

Okay, I might as well admit it–I have no idea what I’m going to do with this blog, other than use it as a repository for assorted passing thoughts, and photos of stuff that interests and amuses me. I’ll probably post some art here, too.

But at the moment I really don’t have any grand ambitions for it, or dreams of monetizing it, or desire to promote it. I don’t even want to be such a beast as a “blogger”–I just want a place for my stuff that won’t get lost amid the clutter, vomited upon by cats, or saved to a flash drive that gets left behind in a library computer and never seen again.

Origin story.

Posted on by Harmless Weirdo

I swore I wasn’t going to start one of these bloggy things.

But earlier this evening, on the University campus, as I pawed through trash cans in search of used Starbucks cups, a campus cop wanted to know what I was up to.

I explained. “There’s a sculpture I want to make, and I need empty Starbucks cups to do it.”

“Why not just go to Starbucks and ask if you can buy some cups?” he asked. “I’m sure they’d sell them to you.”

“But I can’t do that!” I told him. “It’s against the rules I’ve set for this particular project. The cups have to be used once, then tossed. Buying new ones would go against the core premise behind this piece.”

I have no words to convey the expression on his face at that.

“Look,” I said. “I know I’m a weirdo, and what I’m doing makes absolutely no sense to normal people. But I’m a harmless weirdo.”

And then he laughed. “Yeah, I guess you are,” he replied. He wished me luck with my sculpture, and that was that.

One sign that you spend far too much time online is when you utter a phrase in casual conversation, only to walk away thinking that it would make a cool domain name. You trudge up the hill with your drippy bag full of discarded coffee cups, and wonder if that domain’s taken already. When you get home, you look it up, and–much to your surprise–it’s not. So you register it, just because you can, and then decide you might as well do something with it.

Thus, here I am.