• Diaries,  facebook,  slice of life

    Annie’s Retirement Years

    I am now nursing a fourth pet through her end of life…the first three in 2019, 2020, and 2021, all in a row. I guess the thing that strikes me about the death process is how it *is* a process. For two of my animals who took longer to fade (the others were very ill and went quickly in the end), it’s a lot of slow up and down. Good pain days, bad pain days. Sometimes foggier than others.

    It was really hard going through this with my dog Ichabod because he had dementia, too. He mentally slipped away from us quite a while before he actually died. I kept nursing him as long as he was enjoying food, but even petting became uncomfortable for him, and he started having seizures.

    His death was my last relapse on alcohol. It was soooo bad. I abruptly quit nicotine and the mix of grief/withdrawal just sent me straight into clear liquor, and I got my own seizure when I realized that was stupid and stopped abruptly. (Don’t do that.) God, I was an absolute mess that winter. (Don’t feel too bad for me; I am okay, I immediately picked myself up and went to college for a couple semesters. Like I’m super rugged and committed to being gentler with myself.)

    I’ve had two years to chew on the enormity of my feelings about Ichabod’s death, and everything I learned/felt taking care of a canine dementia patient. It was truly just a time of such utter love and grief. Intimacy. Raw loss.

    Little sweet old Annie is taking me back, though. She’s been my obnoxious drooly best friend for sixteen years. This cat, she has never known the word “no” to mean anything. And everything she wants is affection. Human affection, to be clear. When she had more energy, she would not stay out of my face/hands for HOURS, no matter how many times I set her aside, and she has this dreadful drooling thing so it was MESSY.

    Annie’s also a big poo-starter with other cats. I don’t know why, since we watch all our cats closely, we’re literate in body language, we seldom saw actual conflicts between them. But something about Annie was so loathsome to the other cats when she was younger. She was the outsider of the household colony, firmly glued to humans. The sassiest little tortoiseshell with a crispy dragon-baby meow.

    Nowadays she has a Retirement Room. The spare bedroom has everything she needs, and she doesn’t have to compete for resources anymore. Her unpopularity paired with her growing weakness means she gets whatever she wants in a hundred square feet of cat luxury.

    Her body aches so she can’t clean herself well, but I brush her gently with a boar’s hair brush and wipe her greasy face. She has a gigantic tumor on her shoulder we decided not to remove because she’s been fading a while anyway (although I have doubts about this a lot), so I try to wash that and keep it clean too. She gets daily visits from the family. It’s a pretty nice retirement.

    This is one of her low weeks, though. I can see she is more uncomfortable. She loves cuddling, but her mood isn’t as…warm? I can just see the edge to it, and cats don’t really show pain, so she must be feeling it. All the heating pads and cbd in the cat food can only do so much. It is getting cold. I will keep brushing her for now.

    I don’t think I want her to have to stick it out as long as Ichabod did, but it’s a hard choice when she’s still very much mentally Annie.

  • Diaries,  facebook

    Changing, Again – Always

    You know what surprises me about crochet? The way it works muscles I forgot I had.

    It’s improved my grip strength enormously (I think it’s better than when I was heavy lifting—I needed help from straps—and I wasn’t good at rock climbing) and that’s the obvious benefit. I’ve never seen my hands like this. The muscles coming up around my thumbs are so cool!

    But also, crochet works my deltoids a ton. Probably more than any of the standard compound lifts, too. I had to add accessory lifts to get this feeling in my deltoids as a bodybuilder.

    Deltoids are kind of like the muscle caps on the top of your arms, partially controlling the rotation of that complex shoulder joint. Sawing my arms through tight stitches with stiff fabric is *difficult,* and I will do it for *hours* when I’m working on something bulky (a purse, a blanket).

    Even though nothing I’m handling is heavy, I’m watching my arm muscles go crazy and laughing in disbelief like “what??”

    But it also works my chest muscles! I’ve had zero chest development since I quit bodybuilding in early 2020. For me, nothing works like a good chest press, and I just don’t have the stuff around to do that as easily as weighted squats. (Pick something up, squat. You’re done.) So there is only one place that I can be getting aching pectorals from.

    Again, it’s a different kind of development than bodybuilding. It’s less mass, less swelling. I feel like I’m developing *cables* under the skin.

    I am crocheting with a hook, creating fabrics in my hands, and somehow this is also making my body crochet muscle in this whole new fascinating functional way. I have never had a functional hobby in my life. It’s weird learning my body is meant to DO THINGS.

    Most of my core maintenance is actually using a standing desk and picking things up, which also helps my legs a bit. I’m often hauling 40lbs bags of cat litter around, which is nearly the weight of an unweighted Olympic barbell. I pick up and move a lot of plants and heavy water containers.

    Like I’m the chubbiest I’ve ever been, the most body fat no doubt, biggest dress size, but I’m kind of turning into lowkey homesteader farmb0tch strongk? Just DOING THINGS instead of sitting at a computer writing all day? WILD.

  • image credit: Miramax
    movie reviews

    Review: Kate & Leopold (2001)

    Floating on the sheer youthful effervescence of an eager Hugh Jackman, Kate & Leopold is a parable about the sacrifices we make to thrive in capitalist discomfort, and the fantasy of having somewhere to escape it.

    This analysis doesn’t work on a rational level; this old timey rich dude hooking up with an account executive is not exactly the most fertile ground for a literalist anticapitalism commentary. I’m also not entirely convinced that the writer would claim a darn thing to say about That C Word, but I’m using it because what we see Kate struggling in is American capitalism when its shine is wearing off.

    In order to excel in business, Kate has sacrificed something soft & slow to masculinize herself. She dresses in suits and does not waste time with feminine frippery that would make others judge her. Everyone she spends time with are men. Presumably, it’s some kind of victory that her boss thinks she’s as good as a man; unfortunately, he also keeps making aggressive passes at her too. Sacrifice has given her success but not safety or satisfaction.

    We may then see Leopold as a figure representing her alternative. He is disappointed to marry for money, preferring to shun such maneuvers so he can nerd out about elevators and erections. And it’s his disappointment in Kate’s willingness to shill a subpar product that shakes her out of her “this success is everything for me” to realize “actually I don’t want this??”

    More than offering Kate a vision of a slower life de-prioritizing profits, he provides gender affirmation to Kate by treating her like a ~lady~, while also loving her for the intelligence and passion she shows. Kate has formed herself into a storm and Leopold loves the power. Old Timey Nerd Himbo stans a strong futch bitch.

    It might seem like a regressive ending, but it’s really Kate moving away from deep dissatisfaction with capitalism’s shallow rewards to try something…else. Something genuine. Love is a good start.

    I remain convinced that the ending isn’t how the couple ended up, but only a stepping stone to further fabulous time travel adventures.

    The time travel mechanic only works in a way that specifically serves the story; you shouldn’t come to K&P hoping for a more romantic Back to the Future. A lot of the story doesn’t really work if you take anything too seriously. The heart of the movie is carried by the performances of actors who understand that this is about some kind of longing for Better, not just in love, but in life.

    image credit: Miramax

  • movie reviews

    Review: Sabrina (1995) ***

    The Sabrina remake is a lot like Snow White and the Huntsman. There’s a lot of enjoyable movie scaffolded upon a miscast lead. In this case, it’s not the charisma-void of Kristen Stewart mumbling reluctantly through Snow White’s lines, but a 53-year-old Harrison Ford playing a character clearly written to be about 40 years old opposite a 30-year-old woman written to be maybe 25.

    Based on their ages, and the way (a very lovely) Julia Ormond seems constantly controlled by a man old enough to be her father, should call for a different Sabrina/Linus dynamic. It’s like they cast Harrison Ford and then rewrote nothing, expecting to get a relationship more akin to that between Cher and her stepbrother in Clueless. An older brother vibe, yes. “You would have dated my mom,” no.

    Ormond’s Sabrina seems sort of baffled by him, and overwhelmed, and just ends up going along with everything all the time. Ford is so rigid. He puts a tremor in his voice when talking about Sabrina that should be endearing, but he’s kind of a brick wall opposite Ormond. The actual chemistry isn’t there.

    Romantic movies are lovely character pieces, but you can’t have a movie without the most important character, which is the relationship between leads.

    I love the music, the silly humor, the dreamy atmosphere, the Cinderella story. It’s a nice vibe. I always enjoy myself watching it. I also throw popcorn at Linus and tell him to take his creepy hands off that poor girl.

  • movie reviews

    Review: Batman (1989) ****

    It’s fun watching a Batman that is gritty and grounded in bleak 80s aesthetic as a response to the call of Adam West’s Batman. On this revisit, I was surprised how much it felt like the Nolan Batman in places, and less like a Burton project. I always prefer the inquisitive, playful quality to Burton’s early works, but he’s especially sober here to stand apart from the joyful camp of its visual predecessor, and I think it drove Burton toward such interesting choices!

    Joker is really the star here. These days we talk more about the character work on Ledger Joker because he’s more in step with contemporary interests, but Nicholson’s got a razor-edged perspective on a Dick Tracy-esque villain that absolute matches Ledger in craft.

    I love this decentered Batman who is revealed through Vicki Vale’s investigation. He is often background to Gotham’s crime economy—a reflexive reaction from a sick city, serving to frighten criminals and stymie law enforcement. He is painted in simpler beats than Joker. Bruce Wayne is a boy who lost his parents, but through the loving care of his father-butler, seems to have grown up well adjusted for a rich guy…if you don’t know about the fact he is also Gotham’s immune response to the mafia’s cancer because his grief is so huge, it has become a monster.

    This is a marvelous interplay of sick antihero versus sadistic villain inside an institutionally rotten city, which is quintessential Batman, to me. Reeves’s The Batman digs hard into this from a more Bruce Wayne-oriented perspective, but a lot of that scaffolding is owed to Burton’s work here.

    It’s easy to see why this hit so hard back in the day.

  • facebook,  slice of life

    besties

    i hear people describe their spouses as their best friends all the time, but i don’t think they mean it like i do? because my spouse and i are best friends like. relentless mischief makers. second graders who live on the same street. should be supervised by taller adults most of the time kind of best friends.

    we got a halloween decoration with a glass ball on it last week. we realized that it does that thing where it captures sunlight and it gets hot. then we spent an hour in our backyard seeing how much we could set on fire using our new halloween decoration, while our 13yo stood back and said, “i don’t think this is a good idea?”

    today i rickrolled him on the stereo while he was trying to do dishes and he responded by banging the floor under our bedroom with the pole of a broom

    the other day my kid and i built a towering giant with a balloon head and big looming arms and put it on a rolling chair and stuck it in the kitchen so my spouse would be startled by it when he came home from work. and then we left it there so he would forget about it (spouse is very adhd) and get surprised by it every single time he went into the dark kitchen for something later that night. it is SO SATISFYING to hear the “ughghghgh” from the kitchen when it scares him again. (it’s still there.)

    he’s said to me before “our house should look more like a space ship” and my reply was “YES IT SHOULD” and we’ve been putting up like, random cargo nets

    we’re 35/36, for the record. lmao

  • Diaries,  facebook

    lemon, baby

    Behold my MIGHTY LEMON TREE! In summer ‘22, I was gifted a gigundo lemon that I didn’t remember to eat. When I cut it open, I found a seed already germinating. Zut alors! I took that seed and a couple others and put them into tiny cups. I don’t know which survived, but only one survived, and I moved it into a cup in mossy organic substrate. It *exploded* this summer.

    I’ve been trying to prune it in a tree shape (obv the lower leaves need trimming) so it looks like a proper little tree in my kitchen windowsill. Did you know lemon trees wanna stab you? They bite! It’s made me bleed several times from those majestic, citrusy thorns. I think I’m going to turn into citrus at this point, like the werewolf curse, but lemons.

    There is some common street moss in there (like pulled off the side of the road, that’s not actually what it’s called) and a couple little succulent florets so it also looks like a forest in the cup. The grass grows out of the sphagnum moss. I keep trying to pull it out but that shit is ROOTED so now I just mow it with kitchen scissors.

    Yesterday I moved my tree from the McDonald’s cup to a bigger maverick gas station cup. The roots had wrapped all around the bottom of the cup and much of the inside, too. It didn’t stay damp long. Do you know where the soil goes when you’ve had a plant for a while? THE PLANT EATS IT AND TURNS IT INTO MORE PLANT. All these big bushy leaves are like 90% substrate probably. Anyway, they’ve got more substrate now.

    I get to visit with this bad boy in my kitchen every day and it makes me happy, even if I do get bitten a lot.