It's laying on the desk like a missed pototo chip, curling at the edges. Gross. Dh liberated it from dd's big toe last night while she slept. We surreptiously tried to steal it the night before last but got caught when dd suddenly awoke. Dh had the flashlight poised on her digit and I was slowly trying to twist the defunct nail off. I tried to make her think that she had had a bad dream and that she had called out to us and that is why we were there. I don't think she bought it.

She stubbed her toe about two months ago. I figured she would get a nasty bruise under the nail but she never did. Instead, a new nail started to grow under the old one and just popped the old one off. Unfortunately, it hung on for dear life at one corner, a mere thread, and she was certain that it would cause excruciating pain to remove it. So I did what any resourceful mother would do. I bribed her. But she's much too crafty for that. She knows whatever I offer her, she'll end up getting anyway. I tried another tactic. I lied to her. I told her that the ToothFairy had a cousin, an unpopular and often misunderstood cousin. The lure of treasure under her pillow was still not enough. So, once again, under the cover of darkness, dh with clippers and flashlight in hand, crept into her bedroom and stole that toenail with one swift, decisive snip.

Now I have the defunct toenail and she, totally unaware of our chicanery, is 41¢ richer. I think it was a fair trade.

Goliath passed away this morning between 6:00-6:20. We've been together for 16 or 17 years. My friend Wanda called me early one spring day in (probably) 1988 while I was living in South Boston. The trailer park next to her house was flooded again and some kittens were stranded and she needed me to come out and rescue them. I told her on the phone that I couldn't have any cats in my apartment and I really didn't want to come out there. She leaned on me. I caved. So I waded out into the park and retrieved a floating bucket that had 3 of the cutest little balls of fur I've ever seen in it.
On that day I became Mom to Bastet and Goliath. The third kitten was adopted by someone else and grew up to be a huge long haired cat. Goliath was a black and tan dsh and Bastet is solid black except for about 3 hairs on her chest. Goliath was nearly eviscerated twice by dogs. The second time I left him at the vet's overnight and he started to slide downhill. I went to visit early the next day and found him laying in a puddle of his own urine. I soaked it up with newspapers and took my cat out of there. He got a severe infection which ate away his skin, dissolved the sutures and left his guts wide open. I cleaned him up several times a day by injecting hydrogen peroxide into the opening and flushing out the pus. I also applied a necrotizing agent around the opening to dissolve any dead tissue. It took awhile but he healed up nicely.
When I first started writing seriously he used to lay in a basket on top of the drafting table where my word processor was set up. A shaft of sunlight came thru the window and fell right on that basket and he would purr and purr and purr. I remember one time when we were living in the Grandin Court house in Roanoke, Goliath started meowing really loudly from the bottom of the stairs. I got out of bed, went to the laundryroom and let Bastet out. I had inadvertantly locked her in and Goliath told me so I could let her out. I didn't even stop to think. I was that close to Goliath. I was devastated when he got laryngitis a few years ago. I feared I would never have another "conversation" with my best friend again. Yep, I may be nuts but I sure do love that cat.
So, I planted him today. I laid him to rest where he always used to lay to rest. Right in the middle of my flower bed. I was forever fussing at him for flattening my flowers and creating voids. Now he's there forever in his favourite place. He used to sit out there, which was right outside my bedroom window, and wake me up in the morning. I sure do miss him.

Geez, how violent can the first chapter be? It opens with the farmer taking an axe out to the barn to kill the runt pig in the new litter because it'll never amount to anything. I checked the inscription in the front of the book and saw that my mom gave it to me in 1973. I was 10 years old. Of course, this isn't the first time I read it but it had been awhile and I was just now reading it to my 4 year old. In chapter two, the pig, Wilbur, reached the age of 5 weeks old and the farmer told his daughter, Fern, who clearly loves Wilbur to pieces, that she has to sell it because he refuses to feed it anymore. Nice, huh? So, at the end of the chapter she sold her beloved pig to her Uncle for $6 and Wilbur is moved from his happy home under the blossoming apple tree and his cozy little house with the sweet fresh straw inside to the dank, dark, foul smelling basement of the uncle's barn where he now sleeps in a pile of shit. Lovely. My yes, but it's a heart warming story. You just have to wade through gloom and despair to get to the warm bits.
It's like reading Grimm's Household Tales, otherwise known as nightmare fodder, to her at bedtime. Yep, because you are small, you are worthless, of no consequence, and aren't worth wasting food on. Ouch.
And then there's Charlotte, the spider. Doesn't she die in the end? Maybe we should switch to Black Beauty. She likes horses. Oh, wait. The horse is nearly beaten to death on the street. Hmmm. The Velveteen Rabbit. Holy Smokes. Open a vein why don't you? Old Yeller. Riiiiight. Where the Red Fern Grows. That story still haunts me. Way too graphic. Chronicles of Narnia? Maybe.
Is four years old too soon for Nancy Drew? Not much gratuitous sex and violence in those.

Part of me wants to dust off the book and get the main characters out of the sack. Another part says "why bother?" Hell, they've been there for over 10 years. I've brought it out and reread it a few times and I'm generally happy with the various scenes but I just can't tie it together fluently. How do I get from the floating body to the DaVinci project? OT: I got the idea from an article in the Roanoke newspaper where they found an unidentified body floating in the river. The man had a return plane ticket to D.C. and court papers for adoption records in his briefcase.
Ok, back to the subject at hand. Motivation, or lack thereof. I've got Debbie Travis' Painted House on in the background and can't even focus on this blog entry. I use to be able to concentrate with a singular purpose. When I was heavily into portraiture I could remain slumped over my art for hours on end, diligently working until it was finished for if I stopped at any time it would never get done. Now I can't even finish a sinkful of dishes in one session. I'm always leaving the silverware to soak until the water turns cold and flat. So, you see, not only do I lack motivation, but I lack the focus as well. I'll blame that on my child. I now have the attention span of a gnat.
Meanwhile, Debbie is turning a beautiful diningroom into a nightmare in eggplant and celedon. Gag.
blahblahblah I should be in bed but instead I am thinking about everything else BUT writing. Like: should I go with dh and dd to the birthday soiree tomorrow and also visit his grandmother? Or, should I stay home and wallow in the "peace and quiet" and use that time to lay the underlayment in the addition, free from "PLAY WITH ME!" and "I'M THIRSTY"? If I do that tomorrow while they are out of my hair then I'll be able to lay the tile next week. Provided, of course, that I can get a dozen boxes of the tile.
Whew! They finally finished the diningroom and it was God Awful! I can see that room getting several coats of stainblocker after she leaves. And here I am worried about pumpkin on my walls. I think what I'll do in the addition is paint it pumpkin, glaze it with a lighter shade in the same family (or darker, who knows) and then lay an open garbage bag over it, brush it out and then rip it off. It would definitely take care of hiding the monstrous spackle job the last asshole contractor did.
Oh, speaking of asshole contractors... Dh went to court this morning to testify against said asshole contractor and the case was continued. Again. Anyway, dh spoke to the investigator's boss and they mentioned going after Mrs. Asshole Contractor. What a freaking concept especially since my complaint was against her, too, and Mr. Asshole Contractor has about 15 judgements against him already which would put us in the realm of "when hell freezes over" to get any restitution from him.
But I digress. To write or not to write. I registered for the NaNoWriMo. I can't really say I have a chance in hell of finishing a novel in a month's time. I can't really say I'll make a dent. I can say that I will make an effort to spend my time wisely and TRY to pound out a page or two a day. I better have a discussion with my characters and see where Winston and Jennifer want me to take this.

I had the inlaws over for dinner last night. We invited them for Sunday but they changed plans and it was no longer convenient. They were, however, free Saturday afternoon. Dh's stepdad said he wanted bean soup. Ok. I've never had someone tell me what they wanted when inviting them to dinner but ok. I'd have to make something in addition to bean soup because MIL won't eat it. Whatever.
Dh asked if they could pick up his grandma and bring her. That was fine.
Dh called grandma and invited her. She's been calling him lately saying she is very lonely and her back hurts and she's generally unhappy. (Quick history: Her 53 y.o. useless son, dh's sperm donor father, had a stroke last July. He's in a nursing home living his life exactly the way he wants it... right down to someone wiping his ass for him. He's got a phone, tv, vcr and yet grandma has to go feed him his lunch every day. She's 80-something. She sold her house and moved into a retirement home where her lifelong friends already live. But she blows them off everytime they ask her to join them so they don't ask anymore. Her life is consumed with her lowlife, scum sucking son and it's killing her.)
She declined the offer. Dh called his mom and told her not to pick her up. Less than five minutes later she called back and said she would come but that she would call in the afternoon if she wasn't feeling better. Dh called his mom back. A little later grandma calls again and tells dh she can't come because "your daddy has a tummy ache". So? For heaven's sake woman, he's 53 freaking years old. Four year olds get "tummy aches".
Again...whatever.
So MIL&FIL finally get here at 5:20. They were supposed to be here between 4 -4:30 and they are the king and queen of punctuality. They come in the door complaining about how long it took to get here. (They live 30 minutes away... 45 if there's any traffic. However, we only get invited to their "holiday house" which is 1½ hours away.) They come bearing gifts: some breakfast hot pockets and two dubious bbq rib shaped sandwiches and a card game for dd. Dh entertains while I finish cooking. BTW, I made the bean soup. I soaked the beans and cooked them for over two hours. I put in 1/2 lb. of thick smoked bacon. It was perfection as far as I'm concerned.
I call them to the table and MIL immediately says she's not eating any of the soup. Fine. I knew that. FIL starts eating and then tells me he doesn't eat fatty meat anymore and digs out all the bacon. Then says the next time we visit them he'll make some real bean soup for me. He says he's found a really good brand of bean and bacon soup in a can at the dollar store.
Dear Martha, would I be remiss in my obligation as a hostess if I told him I hope he chokes on it?

For those 2 point 3 people who come back to my blog occasionally to see if anything drama worthy has been posted I am about to reveal a diet sized slice of my psyche.
I have the killing gift. I can kill a friendship in a heartbeat without even trying. I can kill a good time just by showing up. I can kill an appetite, a conversation, a thread, a tune, a tone. I can even kill time. I may be killing my marriage and my dd's childhood. I don't know. I'm certainly not aware of doing it but it happens just the same.
Dh says 'we have to get you medicated' while pressing another draft cider into my bottle shaped fist. Alcoholism is fine as long as I'm in a good mood apparently. (No, I'm not an alcoholic. Not even a real drinker. One night of multiple Tequila Kamikazes took care of that, tyvm.)
So what's the gift you ask? A vibe. A subconscious, apparently evil, vibe that emanates from my soul, if indeed I possess one, like reverse ESP, that strikes the fight or flight response in a large majority of people whose lives are unfortunate enough to collide with mine.
I've had the gift my entire life. It wasn't so noticeable in my childhood because we lived such an isolated lifestyle. My parents are isolationists. I don't know how that happened. I remember my mom having friends and going to art classes, etc. but in the early 70s it just stopped. She made an attempt to keep me somewhat social by having the neighbour girls over for craft day, which was the coolest thing in the world, but they had to walk cross country about a mile to get to our house. Think little house on the prairie type stuff but with trees and people with guns. (The sheriff shot his BIL because he thought he was a groundhog. That should give you an indication.) It didn't last long. Apparently the porkchop around my neck wasn't sufficient to get the dog to play with me, if you know what I mean. I spent most of my time communing with nature and perfecting my highbeam flirtation with gravity. Beams in the barn loft perhaps 30 feet above the ground. It's a wonder I didn't do a swandive.
In the mid-70s my brother decided to try and snuff me out. 1976 was a particularly bad year. Knives, drowning, strangulation. He wasn't picky. Whatever got the job done. Fortunately, he was incredibly inept. We really don't speak any more. Karma is currently kicking his ass.
I've been engaged a number of times. "Well, there's something!" you might say. On quiet reflection, though, I can only surmise that alcohol and other illegal substances must block the vibe to an extent. Like a natural forcefield. Once sobriety is sustained for a period of time, the glow of the relationship takes a header. I can't explain my relationship with my dh which has lasted unerringly for nine years now, seven married. He must be one of the few people who isn't bothered by the vibe. He knows it's there though. He's an odd duck himself, an emotionally stunted only child of a broken home. He has successfully blocked out his childhood and his Catholic upbringing which is probably the sole reason we are together. If he didn't have that built-in defense mechanism we probably never would have gotten past the first date.
So there you have it. A sliver of my psyche or psychosis, whichever you prefer.