HOLY MOLY, folks!

I’ve been doing Saturday Jane since February or so.  It’s had its ups and downs, its periods of daily posting and its stretches of silence, but through it all, I have been amazed by the kindness of my readers.

Seriously, ya’ll.  I’m pretty sure the Blogosphere is the best non-physical place in the world.  The people are bright, sincere, and sweet, and always have a pleasant word for somebody else.

Those pleasant words mean the world to me, and so I am constantly checking my comments.  The other day, I noticed that my Comment-Meter was reaching a rather imperious number.

I’ll say it in capslock, so that you can imagine a booming Zeus-like voice accompanying it.

*ahem*

ONE THOUSAND COMMENTS.

ONE.  THOOOOOUUUUUSAND COMMENTS.

I am within one hundred comments of reaching that milestone, and I thought, what the hey, LET’S HAVE A GIVEAWAY!

Here are the rules: whoever posts the 1000th comment on Saturday Jane wins a fabulous prize.  Doesn’t matter what post it’s on, as long as the comment is actual content.  None of this ‘first!’ or ‘haha’ or ‘great’ business!  Those will not be counted, because I am a miserly soul who is out to ruin everybody’s fun.

Now on to the fabulous prize!

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This is the charming and oh so chic Dancing Jewel necklace from the ever impressive Modcloth. Pair it with a casual dress and flats for a ’sweetheart’ vibe or put it on with a low-cut formal top for a touch of pearly elegance!

Just to make sure that everybody has something they want to comment on, I’ll be posting extra this weekend.  Look forward to new Saturday Jane content on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday!

So there we go!  Help me spread the word!  Saturday Jane is turning one thousand comments old, and if you hit the magic number, you get some sweet Modcloth swag!

Hi, all!

A solid post will be coming later tonight, possibly with the help of Laura from Ruby Bastille. In the mean time, here is a poem composed about the Coverbind machine in our office.

WHERE MY SECRETARIES AT.

Ode To A Moste Detestable Foe


Coverbind Machine, O Coverbind Machine,

Your cruel and cold mechanical gleam

Makes my insides twist and scream!

How I hate you, Coverbind Machine.

To dispel my deep and driving ire,

I’d ask you kindly to retire

Then to build a funeral pyre

And please to go die in a fire.

They tell me that you bind reports

If I may offer my retort

If you do what you purport

Then pigs can fly and I’m not short.

All you do is chew up pages!

Mucking up my tasks in stages!

Like a foe, your work engages

All my deepest wildest rages.

Coverbind, I hate your face.

My hatred transcends time and place.

Watch your back, sir, just in case.

Say, have you seen Office Space?

Let’s talk about Ben Ten.

Ben Ten is one of those shows that I have abhorred, from its very inception, with an almost mythological hatred.  Everything about it irked me.  The ‘kids’ that never really acted like kids.  The stupid catch phrases.  The constant ‘plucky boy teases uppity girl’ dynamic of the two main characters.  The whole thing seemed like a transparent attempt to sell toys.

Even the concept seemed thin.  Young boy and prodigal twerp Ben Tennyson encounters a weird bracelet called The Omnitrix.  Ben puts it on, as children do when they find smouldering bits of jewelry in glowing craters, and promptly can’t get it off.  He soon discovers that if he fiddles with The Omnitrix and then whacks it, he turns into one of ten cool super powered aliens.

Cue the crime fighting.

For some reason, he spends all of his time traveling the country with his grandpa and his brainy yet bratty girl cousin Gwen.  Adventures ensue.  Young Ben Tennyson frequently saves the day through a churlish remark and an ill advised poop joke while in the form of a pigeon-monkey-swamp monster.

The crowd goes wild.

You can see why I preferred even ‘The Batman’ cartoon to Ben Ten on a slow Saturday Morning.

All of this made life more difficult for me when Ben Ten’s sequel came out, a series set several years in the future called ‘Ben Ten: Alien Force’.  Like its predecessor, Ben Ten has an Omnitrix, and there is much crime fighting.

And now I can’t get enough of it.

Aaaaugh, and thus the hair tearing.  I have principles, dammit!  Just because the characters have aged a few years doesn’t make the concept any thinner, doesn’t make the banal banter any more tolerable.  The animation is still wooden, the characters are still flat.  Why am I suddenly obsessed with the misadventures of teenage Ben and Gwen, now with the addition of Gwen’s bad boy love interest, Kevin Eleven?

I am not even lying my friends his name is Kevin Eleven.

I think it’s because Ben Ten has finally fallen successfully into its target genre, a subset that I like to call ‘Dream Fiction’.  See, there are essentially two classes of children’s programming.  There are cartoons that appeal to kids because they can see themselves realistically in the main character’s role.  Shows like Teletoon’s ‘6teen’ or ‘Total Drama Island’ or even Spongebob Squarepants, all depict average ‘adolescents ‘ doing believably adolescent things.  The other class, the Dream Fiction class, depicts a life that kids wish desperately that they were a part of.  This shit is everywhere.  Pokemon.  Teen Titans.  Avatar: the Last Airbender. YuGiOh.  Ninja Turtles.  All of these shows have protagonists that kids would either like to BE or would like to be friends with.

When Ben Ten was originally put on the air, the titular brat  had the wrong balance of average and extraordinary.  He was too obnoxious and immature to be someone that his audience looked up to as a hero, but his life was too strange and dangerous for the audience to feel any empathy for his situation.  Nobody wanted to be Ben Ten, and nobody had anything in common with him.

However, when the sequel began airing, the character had made fantastic leaps in his heroic believability.  He was still flawed, yeah.  He was a kid.  He often screwed up and there was an aura of immaturity around him, but he had dropped most of the impish quips that made me want to punch his younger self.  He was less cocky, more awkward, and still a part of daily adventures that hold his audience’s interest, even while he wonders What Girl To Ask To Prom.  The show’s creators finally found the balance they shot for in the beginning, and the show has become wildly popular.

Also, they gave the brainy cousin magic powers.  I could write a whole essay on the powers given to girls in cartoons, but suffice it to say that I think all of her glowy purple demon whatsit is awesome enough to defy stuffy cultural criticism, although I want to be clear that if I wanted to I could get all analytical on this show.  When talking to Laura about it, she mentioned the dynamics between Ben and his folks, and the numerous ways Gwen’s boobs add to her character development in the sequel to the original.  I’d rather keep this brief though, and keep my focus on Ben’s transition from Douchewad Twerp to Passable Human Being.

Ben Ten: Alien Force still isn’t my favorite show on the air.  Like I said, even though the basis of the characters has improved a great deal, the dialogue and the animation are both a bit gawky and stiff.  However, its shortcomings don’t stop me from turning it on every Saturday Morning and giggling every time Ben turns into HUMONGOSAUR and yells “HUMONGOSAAAAAUR” like a Pokemon from Hell and tramples on some unsuspecting alien envoy from Jupitard or The Endless Void Of Nothingness or whatever.  At this point, it is just quality entertainment and I am able to enjoy it without my inner nine year old saying, “Well, come on, even I think this is stupid, and I liked Transformers Animated so that is saying something.”

HOLY SMOKES there are a lot of you today!

I have preempted the post that I was going to put up in favor of saying thanks to Sal of Already Pretty and Winona of Daddy Likey for the link lovin’.  After a long and emotionally draining weekend, it was a nice surprise.

This past weekend I went home to see my family.  We were all gathering for my grandmother’s funeral, and for my niece’s second birthday party, and my brother and his wife came over from Japan, and my sister came over from Pittsburgh, and there were cousins cousins COUSINS.  Cousins up to the rafters!  Cousins in the hallways!  Cousins in the closets!  It was like there was some secret Cousin Machine somewhere that kept pumping out new relatives that I wasn’t familiar with, and they all wanted to pinch my cheek and hug my boyfriend.  I spent most of the time talking to the few family members I knew well and eating cake.

I’ve discovered that at every family gathering there are usually two or three questions that everybody asks you.  These questions alter as you get older, and it’s kind of fun to walk into a room full of your mother’s brothers and guess what The Big Topic will be.  I assumed I would be asked about finishing school, and what my job at the moment was.  I had my answers scripted and set, and I was ready to reel them off without really thinking.

You can understand why I got a little flustered, then, when my Uncle Mike swung me onto his knee and said, “Well, darlin’, when are you and your fella gettin’ hitched.”

Hitched?  What?  Me?  Hitched?  I’m not getting hitched.  Why would you think I’m getting hitched?  I’m not getting hitched.  Just because my fella and I have been dating for what only like five and a half years that doesn’t mean we’re getting hitched. Preposterous.  Ludicrous.

Ridonkulous.

I sputtered something about life choices and Taylor’s graduate school and Uncle Mike just kept nodding sweetly and saying in his bass Eastern Oregon drawl, “Well, I’m gettin’ old now, sweetheart, and there are things I wanna see!”

My father stepped in at the last minute and told Mike that Taylor and I had, not a plan, but a ‘direction and intentions’.    I relayed all of this to Taylor later, who bore it with a half smile and a barely concealed look of terror in his eyes.  Later, on the drive home, while I tortured him with my favorite songs, he said,

“You know, I’m almost getting antsy about getting married.”

“Oh?” I said.  Taylor and I have an agreement that I am not to gush too much about our ‘eventual wedding’ so that he doesn’t explode.  Just talking about gowns usually makes him twitch a bit, and get very quiet and nervous.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I mean I…you know.  I have days like last week where it’s like I’m twenty-two going on eighty and I don’t want to lose my last days of freedom and bachelor-hood, and then I have days where I just…I just want to be MARRIED.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I felt like it was smartest to keep my two cents to myself.

“Not to have a wedding,” Taylor clarified.  “I still want to wait until we can afford a nice wedding, even to try to afford the kind you want.  I just get antsy to…be married to you.”

“Yeah,” I said again, and we dropped the issue.

That night we put our new flannel sheets on the bed and watched the new episode of our favorite HBO show.   I borrowed Taylor’s college sweatshirt because it was cold, and Taylor coaxed the heater to life.  We went to sleep early, and this morning when my alarm when off at 7:00, I texted Taylor in the other room and demanded he come back to bed and lay with me, which he did, until 8:00 when I absolutely had to get up.

Marriage, I’m sure, is very nice, but I am quite happy with the way things are.

As soon as I get the appropriate shoes, I am joining a gym.

I am honestly pretty excited about this.  Over the years I have endured an endless inner battle, between the two sides of my ‘fitness personality’.  One of these, the one that advocates exercise, sounds kind of like a furious Russian body-builder.  The other, the one that advocates laziness, just kind of sounds like me.

Huh.

Anyway, for the majority of my life, Laziness and Fitness have had an ongoing argument, about What We’re Going To Do That Day.

Fitness:  Vell, vhat do you think you are doink?

Lazy:  Uhm. (Eats a donut.) Eating donuts?

Fitness: Ah-ha! This, THIS is precisely vhat ve vant to stay avay from!  Sittink around, eatink donuts!  Let’s go eh…let us go vork out! Get some blood pumpink!

Lazy:  Oh.  (Eats a Dorito.)  Uh.  Do we really have to?

Fitness:  Vell, I suppose ve do not haff to.  But ve…ve should!  Yah?  Ve should get movink!  Sounds like fun, yah?

Lazy:  Uh.  (Eats a nacho.)  Not really.

Fitness:  Oh, come on!  It does!  It sounds fun!  Ve can go joggink!  Ve can go bikink!  Ve can go treadmill…on the treadmill!  There are lots of fun things ve vill do!  All of it exercisink!

Lazy:  That doesn’t…(Eats a Kit-Kat.)…that doesn’t sound very fun.

Fitness:  Vell, it is not fun like…like vatching cartoons fun.  This is different kind of fun.  This is fun like sveating and gettink out of breath and havink the flushink pink cheeks.

Lazy:  Yeah.  (Eats a pizza.)  None of those things sound fun.

Fitness:  Come on! Don’t you vant to be svelte?  Sexy?  Don’t you vant to be able to lift more than ten pounds at vunce?  Do not you vant to go up a flight of stairs, and get to the top vithout haffink to stop to breathe?

Lazy:  Eh.  (Eats a cake.) Overrated.

Fitness:  AUUUGH!  You are so frustratink! You vill end up fat slob, alone vith your Cheetos and Doritos and Tostitos and burritos and you vill get heart attack at age thirty five!  Does none of this vorry you?  Are you not vorried?

Lazy:  Vorried? (Eats a fried chicken.) What’s uh…vorry?

Fitness:  Vorry!  Vorry!  You should be much vorry!

Lazy:  V…worried?

Fitness:  Da.

Lazy: Ah.  (Eats a torte.) I’m not really worried.

Fitness:  This I can see.  Vell, I vill not be drag down vith you into hole of slobness.  You hear me?  I am out!  Kaput!  Until you learn to vork out and haff little bit of self-control, I am not comink back!  You understand?

Lazy:  Sure.  (Eats a rump roast.)  See you around.

Fitness:  No, you von’t! Because I am never comink back!

Thus Fitness slams the door and I’m left in a puddle of sloth, completely devoid of all ambition or energy until Fitness inevitably returns and meekly tries to restart the conversation.

I am hoping that a gym membership will somehow help Fitness gain a little traction in this whole debate, because, lazy as I am, I am even more frugal.

Fitness:  Vell, I return!  Ve go to gym now, yah?

Lazy: Eh…(Eats fudge)…do we really have to?

Frugality:  YES WE FUCKIN HAVE TO.  WE PAID FOR THAT FUCKIN MEMBERSHIP YOU LAZY LITTLE SHIT!  GET OFF YOUR ASS!  GO!  GO!  DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW MANY BILLS WE COULD HAVE PAID WITH THAT MONEY?  DO YOU?  SHOULD I BEAT IT INTO YOU?  IF YOU DON’T WANT ME TO YOU BETTER HEAVE YOUR SAGGY BUTT OFF THAT FUCKIN COUCH AND GET TO THE GYM.

Fitness:  …Yah.

Well, it is Halloween Week and fall is in full swing.  I love driving this time of year, especially in Oregon where the sky is blue and the trees are sobbing red leaves on to the sidewalks.  Houses are decked out with plastic witches are carved pumpkins.  People are walking around with pink cheeks and  the sort of bright, brisk energy that comes from the chill in the air and the constant threat of rain.

In addition to the natural qualities the world takes on in the week around The Witching Hour, there is also some high quality television.

Every year I get oddly excited about all of the ‘fright weeks’ on TV before Halloween, and not because I’m a fan of the typical horror film.  Actually, I’m pretty cowardly when it comes to scary movies.  Especially zombie movies, hughghghghg.  I don’t enjoy being scared.  I spend the nights after I see a scary movie with the lights on, following Taylor from room to room and studiously not sleeping in case the goblins/murderers/inbred psychopaths/yetis come out.

But for all that, friends, there are many movies that profess to be scary, and simply are not. They live on the Syfy Channel, on AMC, on the ever-loathed ABC Family, and now is the perfect time to catch them. Movies like the original Alien (a chiller, sure, but not a horror flick per se) or Teen Wolf, or the endless Stephen King adaptations.  There’s plenty of Halloween television fare that satisfies that innate craving for eeriness without being outright horrifying, and I love it all.

How about you?  Do you have a favorite tame Halloween flick?  Or are you the sort that demands unadulterated scares this time of year?

When I was little, I was one of those kids who was pretty sure I would grow up to be a genius.  Not a scientific genius, per se, but I was convinced that at some point in my life, I would be wearing all-black in a non-gothic way and I would use words like ‘erroneous’ and ‘pulchritude’ in my everyday life.  I would be the sort of person who would be featured in magazines for my epicurean tastes and undeniable sophistication.  I practiced for this future daily by devouring big words and chatting up as many grown-ups as I possibly could.  I was on the road to a great and intellectual future.

Having said this, I would like to tell you that I think Spongebob Squarepants is a very good television show.

Ha, take THAT, snooty-ass little Past-Self!  Eat it!  You’re a grownup now and you don’t even really like Dickens that much any more!  You like SPONGEBOB.  That’s right, I can see you squirming over there in your coke-bottle glasses and Mary-Janes.  You can barely stand the phrase, can’t you?  It sends a chill down your slouchy pre-sophisticated little spine to hear me say it.  Your future is Spongebob Squarepants.

WHO LIVES IN A PINEAPPLE UNDER THE SEA?

SPOOOOONGEBOB.

SQUAAAAAAREPANTS.

But look, okay?  I’ve got a really good reason for it.  It’s the same reason that I feel almost all good cartoons are good.  Let me explain myself, before you judge your future self too harshly.

The basic premise behind Spongebob Squarepants is to view the world of adults through the eyes of a child, and prove just how silly the goings-on of adults really are.  Alternately, take a show like Disney’s bygone cartoon, Recess.  The simple premise of Recess is to view the world of kids with a perspective of  importance and severity that is usually applied to the world of grown-ups.  Simply put, a good cartoon is able to expand its appeal by blurring the line between youth and age by providing commentary by both.

See, Past-Self?  This is a compromise.  I like Spongebob, but only because of the elaborate cultural themes.

That’s it.  Nothing else.

Seriously.

Shut up.

Anyway, after a brief disappearance in the early nineties, this premise has been steadily gaining popularity again, due largely in part to the growing capabilities of children.  Put simply, kids don’t want to be spoken down to.  The days are gone when adults used entirely different tools than the younger set.  Now grownups have cellphones, and kids have cellphones.  Grownups have iPods, and kids have iPods.   Grownups use the computer, and kids know more about computers than most grownups will every hope to.  The playing ground has been evened out, and while children still want entertainment geared towards their specific cultural and aesthetic tastes, they aren’t interested in being condescended to.  They want their programming to be separate, but equal.

This is why shows like Spongebob Squarepants have grown so wildly popular. The character  Spongebob  is a child living and working in a world meant for adults, but he manages it, and usually even beats it.  He has a house and a pet.  He has a job complete with boss and surly coworker.  Many of the problems that Spongebob faces are problems specific to an adult life, but his likable innocence and childlike wonder usually pull him out of any sticky situations.  Kids love Spongebob Squarepants because it portrays the foreign phenomenon of grown life  to be as strange and ridiculous as they’ve always suspected.

On the other side of the coin, adults appreciate Spongebob for confirming what they’ve discovered to be true.  Adult life IS silly.  It’s overimportant, overdramatic, and generally overrated, and they envy Spongebob’s enthusiasm for it all.  He retains his cheer and effervescent attitude when faced by the bullying Squidward or greedy boss Mr. Krabbs, which is more than most grown ups can hope to do.  Even while we jaded ageds are jealous of Spongebob’s naivete, we root for him to expose the inanity of what we have to deal with.

And just like that, Spongebob Squarepants becomes a universally appealing show.

It’s also good old fashioned surrealist entertainment, but we can talk about that later.

So, all that being said, I have heard more diehard sentiment towards Spongebob Squarepants on either side of the board than on any children’s programming for the past ten years.  Except of course when somebody thought the Teletubbies were gay Jews or whatever.  What are do you think?  Are you Pro-Bob?  Or Anti-Bob?

Part of my job entails taking photos of houses.

It’s one of my favorite aspects of my position.   I get to be a little artsy, a little creative, but not too much because Lord knows that Real Estate Photography and Artistic Photography have about as much in common as peanut butter and a bag of rocks.  This became apparent after my first gig, where I took pictures with ANGLES! and LIGHTING!  and SHAPES! and my boss surveyed them with her characteristic grin and politely told me that a weasel with a LiteBrite could have done a better job.

So last Thursday was the third house that I had photographed.  It was a rambling one story house with beautiful floors and a broad kitchen, the sort of place that made me wish I had a spare several hundred thousand dollars hidden away in a sock in my closet.  I had been there only once before, when I was setting it up for a realtor tour.  The occupant was a bright girl who was doing what she could to make the place look nice.  She had set up several signs around the premises.  Signs that said ‘PLEASE DO NOT LET CAT OUT’.

I looked for said cat.

I found him in the center of a hallway, watching with amusement as the house tenants picked their way around him.  He was a sprawling grey tabby with a luxurious coat and those deep jewel-eyes that cats sometimes have.

Oh, I thought.  One of those cats.

“Yes, well, he is declawed,”the tenant said, ferrying a vacuum cleaner to a back closet.  “If he got out, I just…I just don’t know what would happen.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” I told her.  “These agents, they are very conscientious.  They deal with this sort of thing all the time.”

(NOTE:  Not all agents are ‘very conscientious’.)

So I finished preparing for the tour and went back to work.

I didn’t go back until the next day, to take those photographs.  By that time I had forgotten about the tabby.  I got out of my car, balancing camera equipment around my person, struggled to activate the lockbox that realtors use to get in and out of the houses, and kicked the door open to save my busy arms the effort.  Sitting directly in front of the door, his green-jewel eyes cocked in an expression of irritation, was The Cat.

“MRAAAAAOW,” he said imperiously.

“Oh, hi Cat,” I said breathlessly.  I set my equipment down as carefully as I could and pushed the door shut with my toe.  The Cat surveyed me with interest.

“Fft!” he said suddenly, stalking forward on long, limber legs.  “Mrow?”

“Cameras.” I told him.   “I’m going to take pictures.” I settled a bulky panoramic lens on our tiny Sony.  It looked a little ridiculous.

“Prrt!” The Cat said.  He sniffed at the silver carrying-case.  “Prrow?”

I gave him a long look.  I had been told before, by many jaded agents with haggard faces and flowered shirts, that in Real Estate-ese  “I have a pet” means  “You have a problem.”  That factoid wedged itself into my brain, a nugget of uncertainty.

“Just…try to stay out of the way,” I said, stroking his back.  “No cats in these pictures.”

“Prrrrr.”

I set up a shot of the living room, including the bay window and the fireplace.  I silently congratulated myself.  A good shot.  Just as I took the picture, I noticed a slight slithering movement in the edge of the frame.

The Cat lay stretched on the rug.

“CAT,” I said.  “Cat, these are house pictures.  Move.”

“MRAOW.” The Cat said.  “MRAAAOW.”

I strode forward, plucked up the cat, and set him in the kitchen.  Returning to my beautifully composed photo, I retook the shot and examined it on the playback.

On the lower right, a smooth grey tail waggled like a banner.  I looked down.  The Cat stared placidly up at me.

“Mrrrrr,” he purred.

I scooted him behind me with my foot and took the shot quickly, holding him in place with the point of my boot.  Once I had the living room secured in my little Sony, I glared down at him.

“Mrow?” he asked.

I plucked him up and stomped to a back bedroom.  He purred peacefully in the crook of my arm until I gingerly threw him in and shut the door.

Freakin’ cat.

I proceeded to take photos of the rest of the house.

The photos went rather quickly when I didn’t have The Problem to deal with.  I took shot after shot with laser-like precision.  Each bedroom became a boudoir.  The garage became a workshop.  The wood floor was polished and flawless and the kitchen became ‘airy and spacious’.  For about five minutes, I was the Dali of real estate photography.  My pictures would make a broker fall to their knees, before the glory of a well-lit bathroom, and weep tears of joy for the perfection of their art.  I was, quite clearly, some kind of prodigy.

In the middle of a rather painstakingly angled shot of the laundry room, however, I was jolted back to reality.

“MROOW.”

I lowered my camera slowly, waiting.  He could sense my movement.  Better to wait until he stopped listening for me.

Silence.

Holding my breath, I peered into the viewfinder of the camera, and slowly clicked the button.

CLICK-CLICK.

“MROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.”

“AUGH, CAT,” I shouted.  “I’m almost done, okay?  A few more rooms.”

“MROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.”

I tried to stay calm and finish my work, but with each passing second, the yowls grew in intensity and volume.  Somebody was going to pass by and think I was knifing a yodeler.  Or worse…the girl who owned the cat would come home and hear her baby screaming for release.  That would look bad.  I began snapping photos recklessly, picking up images of dark corners and shoddy woodwork.  The flawless chapel of real estate I had created was crumbling more with each substandard picture I took.

“MROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.”

“I KNOW DAMMIT I KNOW.”

Another bathroom: too bright, too small.  A closet: taken shut, shoot, shoot.  No time to retake.

“MROOOOWOWOWOWWWRRRRM.”

I had almost finished, except…augh.  The backyard.  I didn’t want to risk The Cat running out there.  He’d have to stay in the room for now.

“RAO. RAO. RAO. RAO. RAO.”

He had changed tactics.  I bolted through the backdoor and began snapping pictures of the yard.  It was broad and had lots of corners for landscaping…I’d need to be sure I showed it…

I clicked away madly, suddenly become aware of a series of muted thumps.  That bastard was trying to break out.  He was going to break his skull.  That girl would come home and her newly mopped wood floors would be splattered with cat skull.  I continued photographing, uncomfortably aware of the bashing sounds issuing from the house.  Something was going to happen, and I was going to get blamed for it.  Hurry hurry hurry.

WHUMP.  WHUMP. WHUMP.  WHU-

And suddenly the thumping stopped.

It was not a comfortable sort of silence.

The next several events took place in slow motion, as my brain sped beyond the movement of my body.  With a sudden jolt of fear, I realized the back door was open.  The back door was open, and the thumping had stopped.  A low bass tremor of terror stabbed my heart and I turned, the camera dangling on its string around my wrist.  I saw The Cat padding through the kitchen, towards the open door, head down, eyes intent, moving closer velvet step by velvet step.  I saw the sign, like some sort of prophetic herald, taped to  the glass, “PLEASE DO NOT LET CAT OUT”, the ‘please’ underlined with the fervor of a mother’s love.  I felt myself take a step, then another, then a lunge, and then a dive.  I reached for The Cat, just as he noticed my wild-eyed arrival and began to turn, and instead of finding myself with an armful of fur, I got a faceful of cat butt as I belly-flopped onto the kitchen floor, sliding towards the refrigerator.  The startled cat, propelled forward by my momentum, endured this moment in silence.

We slowed to a stop.  The Cat shifted, and before he could full recover from the indignity of it all, I stumbled to my feet and shut the back door.  He watched this peevishly, and jumped onto the kitchen counter.

“MROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.”

Rather than stuff The Cat in a blender, as was my first inclination, I packed up my equipment and left.

Epilogue: The next week, after I had loaded my photos onto the necessary websites and put them on the necessary flyers, my boss called me.

“What are these on the websites?”

“Photos?” I suggested.

“Well,” I heard my boss chewing the thought over.  “You’ll have to retake them.  I don’t  know what you were up to, but they’re pretty unusable.”

Cue sad trumpet.

Wa-waaaaa.

Typically, autumn is my favorite season.

Favorite may be the wrong word.  I’m not fond of the drizzly spitting rain, or the freezing mornings, or the DRIZZLY SPITTING RAIN, but fall is just so evocative that every time it rolls around I get distracted by this wave of ambition and nostalgia.  To me, autumn is:

  • Gazing wistfully at the soft, thick scarves at Target and trying on the gloves while reminding myself that I have PERFECTLY GOOD hand-me-down gloves and a scarf from Goodwill.
  • The smell of my father’s home-made potpourri.  Orange peels, apples, cinnamon.  Spicy and warm and thick.
  • Wanting desperately to be a tall skinny girl with curly hair and a snood and a Beautiful Jacket.
  • Suede.
  • Pink cheeks.
  • Finally adding that down comforter to the bed and feeling absolutely spoiled the first night you slip under it.
  • Tomato soup.

Oh, hey about tomato soup.  Did you know I used to hate tomato soup?  I hated it with the fiery passion that I employed to hate nearly every other food except pickles and ketchup.

Ironic.

I know.

This continued until the autumn of last year, when I went back to my parent’s place for dinner one night.  On the stove, my father had a massive pot filled with gently rumbling soup.  Rich soup.  Red soup.  Tomato soup.  I gazed at it with a curled lip and only deigned to a ’small bowl’ being that I ‘wasn’t that hungry, really’.

It was literally the most delicious soup in the universe.  You guys think I’m using hyperbole here.  I am not.

A few months later I asked Dad for the recipe.  Whenever I ask my Dad for a recipe, he always frowns and makes a sound like a cat that wants in.  “Wrrrell…” he said, “It’s not really a RECIPE.  Just stuff I put in.”

“That is a recipe,” I said.  “And I want it.”

Here it is, after some goading and whining on my part.   The recipe for Bagley Tomato Soup:

1 can Roasted Garlic & Sweet Onion Diced Tomatoes (S&W)
1 can Petite Diced Tomatoes
1 can Tomato Sauce

Use a blender to blend can of Garlic Tomatoes

Dump in everything with:

2 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 tsp basil
1/3 cup Splenda (or sugar)
salt and pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder

Heat and eat with garlic bread.

It should be noted that Dad’s recipe will give you chunky soup, which is okay, if, y’know, you’re into that.  I prefer my soup velvety smooth so I blend the shit out of everything that goes into it.  Also, if you aren’t able to find the S&W brand of canned tomatoes, I am sure a similar brand would work just as well.  Who knows?  You may find a fantastic new taste with a different ‘flavor’ of tomato.

Taylor and I had this soup for dinner last night, and it was the perfect solution to a long, rainy day.  We bundled up and dipped garlic bread into steaming bowls and watched ‘The Good Wife’ On Demand, and I even went for seconds and ate it without the garlic bread it was that good.  The whole thing almost made me excited about the muddy puddles growing outside.

In the wake of current events, as I wade through the seeping tide of Things I Have Felt Lately, I feel that it is only appropriate that I start making some goals to anchor myself.  This blog will serve as an avenue for said goals, and ya’ll are free to hold me accountable to my ever-liquid ambitions.

  1. Post here at least twice a week.  For awhile I was looking at posting three times a week, but I figure I’ll step this up slowly.  Hopefully Mondays and Thursdays.  That’s the plan, with extras occurring when something worth mentioning happens.
  2. Talk about things I want to talk about.  I have struggled a great deal deciding what it is that I want to say here.  When Internet Folk make their lists of Top Ten Or Five Or Whatever Tips For Blogging one of them is always ‘write what you’re passionate about’.  And what am I passionate about?  I’ve tried to be passionate about lots of things the internet likes.  Fashion.  Cats.  Lists.  Ultimately, though, I’ve only managed a mild enthusiasm for any of these things.  In the end, my friends, I am passionate about one thing.  One childish, slightly embarrassing thing, and that thing is Kid Culture.  Cartoons.  Action Figures.  Comics, and I don’t mean that artsy shit about lonely people being lonely in misty cities full of espresso shops and irony.  I mean good old fashioned Ninja Turtles and Ben Ten and Powerpuff Girls.  I don’t know if anybody here wants to hear about these things, but I’m excited to write about it, so I might as well try.  This doesn’t mean that I’ll quit talking about our terrible apartment and the people I’m jealous of at worse.  I’m just going to also talk about the ways I spend my Saturday mornings, too.
  3. Learn to improve the proportions in my numbered lists.
  4. Figure out how to increase my readership.  Not that I don’t love you people, you glorious people who come here to see what I say and add your hello in the comments, but the goal of every writer is to be read by as many people as possible.  I haven’t done much work to find new readers, and I think that it’s time that I start.

There.  I won’t lie, goals make me nervous.  They’re too easy to miss, and I don’t have the best luck with them, but I have to try something sometime.  I am going to cross my fingers, put my nose to the grindstone, and hope for the best.

Thanks for sticking with me, people.  See you on Thursday.

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