Spidercamp

your princess is in another house, go away

Sometimes, especially when Logan is out of town, I go through long stretches of not leaving the house, of wearing my pajamas all day and not doing very much except writing and eating noodles and watching tv and playing Chicken. Which is pretty awesome (EXCEPT FOR THE PART WHERE I MISS LOGAN. HI LOGAN) because it takes me quite a while to get lonely, I mean for people in general, and then when I do, I can fix it. But it does leave me with a dearth of immediate stories to tell. Which is ok too. I could talk about what I watched on the teevee but that's mostly Tom Selleck running around Hawaii in tiny little shorts. Anyway that's why I talk a lot about the post office sometimes, because sometimes those are the only strangers I've seen all week. And I do get a kick out of Mrs. Pitts.

Today I drove behind a pickup truck labeled "Jebus Stained Glass." No kidding.

Today my cashier at the grocery store wore a name tag that said "Techeriah." Like Zacheriah? Tech for short? I very badly want that to be her real name, but last week I was waited on by Chia Pet, so maybe they are just labelmaker-happy at the Publix.

I went to a different post office today, because it is Christmas and I needed a big one. They did not have a Mrs. Pitts, but they did have a big guy behind the counter in a spiffy blue USPS tie who apropos of absolutely nothing busted out some loud-ass Jingle Bells, complete with "...open sleigh - HEY!" punctuated with a powerful crotch thrust. By the end, half the room was singing along.

When I got to the front of the line I asked him if the Christmas spirit had suddenly moved him, or what, and he said Naw, my computer froze up, had to kill time somehow. Like it was the only logical option, like that's what anybody would have done.

On the magical island where I am king and always get my way, this is how it would have gone down

Lately I have a hard time meeting people, any people, so I would like a couple of really fantastic ones to be delivered to my door please.

-

I miss little kids. It doesn't plague me but it does crop up. Last week at the coffeeshop I was charmed by three-year-old Jackson, who was very excited about chocolate milk and then got a little nervous when the coffee lady said she would make him a big glass of broccoli milk, special, with extra asparagus. He tasted it real slow, like, Is she serious?

Jackson was clearly charming in his own right but it also got me because to this day any mention of kids hating broccoli makes me think of Jeanne, who I nannied for a summer and who everybody thought was mine. Like any sane six-year-old she hated broccoli, but then I cooked some for dinner. She asked if she had to eat it and I said Course not, it's for me. And then she wanted to try it, and claimed to like it now, even through the grimace. That kid ate broccoli every time I did, in tiny little agonized bites chased with lots of water, all summer, because she loved me.

-

Anyway. Sometimes I miss having kids around, specific kids or kids in general. And sometimes I just miss knowing adults who understand that kids are amazing little buggers who will amaze you at every turn by thinking in ways that adults simply can't. As criminally rare as that opinion was among the parents and teachers I dealt with for eight years, once in a while I'd meet somebody who got it. So one of these awesome people I'm having delivered to me will need to be a mom who really digs her zillion kids and tells good stories about what little weirdos they are.

Her companion should be a fun guy who chats and laughs easily and reminds me of Brannon and is a complete delight. I need them to talk a mile a minute at the same time. They'll be interesting and make me feel interesting; they'll be funny and cute and smart and complicated. As I'm thinking that it feels like I've known these people for ages, one of them will say so out loud. Is that goofy or idealistic? Don't care.

We'll creep toward the door but take a long time about it, laughing. We'll say we ought to get together sometime, and not in the fake way - we all mean it, and know we really will.

My day's already made and then, as they're leaving, damn, I'm invited to come over and play Star Wars, for real.

holy shit please stop emailing me about the kittens

Just stop it. I appreciate it. I mean I guess I知 supposed to appreciate it. (EDIT: And I really do appreciate the tons of helpful advice - that's what I asked for, after all, and I received a lot of really great ideas and I am grateful even though I have fucked it up.) It;s been a tremendous response and I guess I知 supposed to feel touched that so many people care but really all I am is irritated that so many people want me to write them a personal note about it. If I took the time to write a personal note to everybody who sent me a variation on BUT R KITIES OK!!??! then I would not have time to go to the post office for multiple hours every goddamned day or make christmas presents for like millions of strangers at the last minute or freak out about stupid things or get my ulcer back or feel like the biggest dick in the world, which right now is my priority.

I am the biggest dick in the world and I will prove it by refusing to answer concerned emails from people who are probably very nice, and I will prove it by letting kittens freeze to death. I have a hard time answering these emails with any sort of optimism when I am pretty sure at least one of them froze to death in a dumpster which was carted off this morning. The one night I actually saw them out there, did I do everything I could to get them inside? I did not. I went inside when it was no longer conveneient to be out there. The details of this are making me sick and if there is a magical happy ending you can be sure I will tell it here without anybody nagging me about it. Until then, I知 the asshole.

this is boring and will be deleted when it isn't relevant

The stuff that was supposed to go out yesterday DID go out today, thanks to an hour and a half in the damned post office. The stuff that was originally supposed to go out today can't go out till tomorrow because the internet went to hell for almost 24 hours and I couldn't look up anybody's address. There is no progress on the kittens. The security guy says he has seen only one of them for the past few nights. Noah's coming up tonight and we're going to stake out the parking lot. The one that has disappeared is the less fluffy one and the one more likely to freeze to death. I am fucking sick over this. I should have gotten them the first night I saw them even if it took all night.

OH ASS / Rayvonne

(This is because I know I will forget to email somebody about this.) To everybody who bought something from me directly, through etsy, or through ebay this week: I'm very sorry but the stuff that was supposed to go in the mail today will not be mailed until tomorrow. I worked my ass off all day finishing hats and rabbits and I went through an entire roll - ! - of packing tape and then I went to the post office and stood in line for forty-five minutes and then they told me to go away because they were having technical difficulties, i.e. aint nothing getting mailed today. And by the time I could have gotten to the nearest other branch it would have been past five. So it will all go out tomorrow morning and I'm very sorry. But I think we are still ok for pre-Xmas delivery.

--

Then I went to the grocery store and witnessed a tantrum almost as good as the one I saw a woman throw several years ago over an increase in stamp prices. This one was a trim, besuited yuppie who discovered Publix was out of flour and threw a screaming swearing fit aimed at the checkout girl. YOU DON'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND, I HAVE TO MAKE A GOD DAMN CAKE, etc.

Rayvonne looked about seventeen and had a head full of the most beautiful red-brown crinkly curls and a big pregnant belly out to here. It was rush hour at Christmas at the Publix and Rayvonne clearly did not have time. She stood there calmly with her eyebrows up until the yuppie howled I SHOULD HAVE GONE TO KROGER! and Rayvonne said, They right down the street maam, you wanna take a left and go bout two miles, you have a pleasant holiday now.

The yuppie stomped mutteringly away and I just grinned like a dope at Rayvonne, who turned to me and said, A fool can't argue by theyself.

kitten help, please internet

Dudes, I need advice, my heart is breaking here.

In the parking lot there is a temporary dumpster. It’s going to be gone in a week or so. This week there are three cats living under it.

Two of them are tiny kittens. They look just barely old enough to be away from their mother. The third is not their mother, it is a horrible fat tom who won’t let the little ones eat.

I don’t think this tom is their father either - he’s been hanging around the parking lot for a year or so, and these kittens have only recently showed up, fully formed. The colors don’t make sense at all either - one kitten is snow white, one is yellow, and the tom is gray striped (I know odd things can happen with coloration but I don’t buy it in this case).

I think some asshole ditched these kittens and they took up with the tom in order to eat the scraps of the scraps he finds in the dumpster. I think they need to come inside.

The only problem is how to separate them from the tom. They’re clearly scared of him - I took food out a couple of times, and the tom won’t let them get near it. They cringe back from him. They’re also wary of me, but they’ve let me get pretty close. The only problem is, I can only approach the kittens, not the tom. When I get near the group of all three, the tom bolts and the kittens freak out. But the kittens hang close to the tom because that's where the food is.

So I am looking for advice on 1. how to separate the tom from the kittens and 2. how to grab the kittens after that. So far I know the trick of using two plates of food, but the tom eats so fast that he’s able to bolt one down, then run over to the second before the kittens have gotten bold enough to investigate. Do I need like sixteen plates of food or what? Because I will do it.

My brother has also instructed me in how to build a cartoon-style box trap, seriously. I will probably give this a try even though it’s a long shot and my neighbors are going to be watching my ridiculous ass play wile e coyote in the parking lot.

Jon, patron saint of sad doggies, has advised me to call Animal Control. That’s not a bad idea and I will probably do so if this isn’t taken care of soon. But right now it’s after 5 pm and I know how this county works. And it’s sleeting.

I know animals have instincts but they're just so little and they have no mother and this apartment isn't well-suited to cats but I will figure that out after I get them inside, which, right now, is all I want in the world.

If anybody has any ideas on how to nab these guys, please, please email. spidercamp at gmail dot com.

if this doesn't bring back the talking animals nothing will.

Not that I have bothered with many, because why, but so far the most interesting critique I have read of the Narnia movie is here. Nutshell: in this version, Aslan is not nearly as present as he should be, as you'd expect, or as C.S. Lewis wrote down, so it'll be interesting to see what religious message people take away from the film, or how that religious message may then be wielded.

But a beautiful movie, even if a little short on soul. For me both versions boil down to the lion walking through the woods in the middle of the night, the girls following him and trying to be silent, the lion admitting that yes, he would like company, his sad heavy head in the moonlight, and, later, how the girls broke in half and wept and wept and kept a vigil until dawn. If that scene is put together (and it was) in a way to make me feel the way I felt when I first read it when I was ten (I could tell you exactly what room I was in; I cried myself sick), then from my narrow dumb point of view it is a perfectly crafted movie and the other two hours could be dr. phil for all I care.

Funny to see the birth of a movie the kids are going to grow up with as canon. Girls are going to obsess over that green dress and the circlet of silver flowers. What else is funny is watching a preview for some piece of shit kids' movie with Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher doing the voices of, like, a monkey and an ottoman who go on adventures and aren't funny, and realizing that I never have to see that movie, which is very unlike the way my life used to be, when I'd see a preview and think, not whether I would end up seeing it with the kids, but my god, how many times will this be visited upon me? No more; blessed be.

--

Dear internets: do you need my rooster? Holy cow please say yes. Also the other crap! Also rabbits what swear.

how many kids with ADD does it take to change a lightbulb LETS GO RIDE BIKES

dr. doyle says: >Broke up a "play" fight on a field trip between two lads, each bigger than me--grabbed one, a kid I've known since he was a toddler, and said "He's my dawg"--caught everybody (including me) by surprise. It worked. Keep feeding me the lingo, thank you. - I liked it yesterday morning when I could not assess the importance of, or need for concentration on, Logan's business call, so I tried to be quiet. And then I was wrapping Christmas presents in the bedroom but that seemed too crinkly so I stopped, but then logan came in with a note that said Where is the cheddar?? and I had to go find it for him and he was still on the phone and making a complicated series of faces and gestures that I knew meant What the hell, that is the one place I didn't check, sorry I'm dumb, thank you for getting up, do you want a sandwich too? And I don't know, it was just adorable and I like shacking up.

Jessica needs an adoptive family that is very structured. jessica needs to keep her mouth shut

I'm like a little kid who wants to be a pirate or a truck and pores over the relevant library books, lovingly obsessing over the details of tire treads or scabbards. These days I have the retardedly endless Internet.

The wind that howled, the snow and the hats, the lights in the sky and the ships in the harbor.

Best Dream All Year

My uncle loaned me his new car. A big boat with fins, scrubbed clean, pastel like wedding candy. A pretty girl said she'd love to go for a ride. It was a warm evening and I put the top down. The girl's hair streamed out behind her. I turned on the radio and it was exactly the right song, cheerfully era-appropriate; everyone sighed.