Posts by Kate Paulk

Of Departing Kansas

Not literally, since I’ve never entered Kansas in the first place, but the way Dorothy Gale does early in The Wizard of OZ, when she emerges from her somewhat battered house to find herself in the middle of a strange city.

What brought this to mind is seeing the headlines about the bushfires in Australia – and remembering one of the nasty fire seasons I’ve lived through. I never faced anything like the worst of the fires, but I do know how bad they can get, and I did watch flames playing around bush near where we lived (and more to the point,  watching them and hoping like hell the flames didn’t get close enough to the big gas tank to cause… issues).

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Taking Culture Beyond Yogurt

Or cheese. Not that I dislike either, it’s just they don’t work well as analogs of human culture, as it were.

See, a lot of writing uses the whole stranger to the culture thing because it automatically ramps the tension up – it’s an easy way to add a level of risk and suspense that the author doesn’t have to do much about, and they’ve got a nice, simple way to avoid the dreaded infodumpus by having their out of place character asking questions (you didn’t really think Rowling made Harry Potter that dumb because she wanted him to be stupid, did you? She set him up so he’d be completely clueless and with a built in aversion to reading up on things, then handed him the biggest scold/substitute big sister/nag ever to be his assistant (and I like Hermione as a character but have to admit she’s a bit too much like me for my comfort – although I was a bit less inclined to trust authority) so she could tell him whatever he needed to know whenever he needed to know it).

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Resolutions

It’s that time of year, when people look at the bright shiny new year and think “I must do something to improve myself”. This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing, but if you’re anything like me, it’s also the time when you make all these nice, shiny promises to yourself, knowing full well that you’re going to wind up breaking them as the year winds on.

It’s human nature to want to commemorate something new with some kind of improvement to their lives. Sadly, the power of habit usually wins – especially with me. I freely admit to being lazy (as I tell my co-workers, I want to do it once,  right). I also admit that what passes for my mind has gone awol, and wherever the bloody thing is hiding it’s not doing any of the work I need it to do.

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Merry Christmas to all

As I type this, it’s evening on Christmas Day, so I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, I hope that whatever you do celebrate was equally wonderful.

I’m currently sitting at my desk with Midnight sprawled out over one of the kitty beds. The little pink tongue isn’t out, but it’s been out a lot today. He is, of course, adorably ebulz, as any basement kitty should be.

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Where Did It Go?

The time, I mean. Seriously, I feel like 2019 got started only a few weeks ago, and we’re into the end of the year and all the Christmas decorations are out in the stores and I’ve managed yet another year without accomplishing anything beyond keeping my job and more or less staying alive.

I will admit that the boys make life challenging at the moment. Midnight has decided that he likes to be petted, but he is very much  not a cuddle-kitty. He is well on the way to being a true basement cat, with all the ebulz that entails. Westley is much more laid back and inclined to just go with whatever is happening at the time.

Curiously enough, Princess Buttercup does not cuss out Midnight, but she does swear at Westley. Kitteh dynamics are… interesting.

Possibly the most annoying thing for me at the moment is that I can no longer see the screen clearly without glasses. I can see well enough to read most sites, since the shape of the works is quite recognizable even if they’re a bit on the blurry side, but if I want any sort of clarity, the close-up glasses come out. Irritating. It makes reading a planned activity rather than something I just do.

The same with writing, actually – because I can’t see as well as I used to, I have to stop to think to get the glasses out and on (and the damn things make anything at a distance blurry as hell, so I tend to only wear them when I’m at work). Those of you who have been wearing glasses most of your life can stop snickering now. I’ll mourn my lost perfect vision as much as I want thank you very much.

I’ll admit that it’s not quite the same when I’m typing as when I’m reading, since I’m close enough to being able to touch-type that I can type while being mostly asleep. I suspect I’ve managed to type a fair amount while being actually asleep, just because being a narcoleptic I have a tendency to lose track of whether I’m asleep or not – and the normal “you don’t move much when you’re asleep” thing doesn’t really work right with me.

I know I’ve had episodes where I’ve done something and have absolutely no memory of it. Some of them have even happened without there being any kind of injury or trauma. I’m pretty sure that’s one of the more entertaining aspects of neurological disorders, where you do something that’s relatively normal and appear to be more or less your usual self, but you’re actually running on autopilot while the conscious portion of your mind is… somewhere else. It’s more likely to happen when I’m overtired, so I try not to let myself get overtired.

All of which sums up as “yeah, not much happened this year. Again. Maybe I need a better way to kick my slacking rear end into gear and keep it there.”

You asked

Well, someone did.

Yes, that means more kitty-pics. Which, I might add, are not easy to acquire. The boys rarely stay still long enough these days.

They have recovered from the trauma of the Vet, and now rampage cheerfully through the house when not demanding attention and head scritches. Thus far staying still for long enough to be cuddled isn’t happening, but curling up on the bed with us is becoming a nightly event.

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Of The Giving Of Thanks

As I write this, it’s the evening before Thanksgiving Day in the USA, and I am exceedingly thankful. I am thankful the first vet visit for the Dread Kitty Westley and Midnight found nothing serious, and Her Royal Highness Princess Buttercup’s annual checkup went well. I am even more thankful the whole thing is over for a year, because getting two not-entirely-trustful kittens and one older cat who did not like the shenanigans into cat carriers was not something I want to repeat any time soon.

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