I’ve always thought that a person’s home should represent that person.  Perhaps I have carried this a bit too far in the decor (heh) of my current home, but hey.  I happen to like having all those bookshelves in the bathroom, and having push-button talking pictures on the walls in there.  I like my orange sofa and my red chair.  I am able to comprehend that they do not match, but the liking compensates for the ferocity of their clashing.  I like more than a dash of funk in my surroundings.  I want my house to be tasteful but groovy.

I read somewhere that having lots of pictures of friends and family members framed and hanging or sitting about the house isn’t cool.  Says who?  I LOVE seeing beloved faces on the walls and on the tabletops.

Sometimes I look at the pictures of rooms in magazines and sigh; they’re just so, well, RIGHT.  The colors match and the accessories match and there’s not a pile of shoes in sight.  In fact, those pictures seldom show any indication that anyone actually lives in those rooms.  I think this is because no one does.

In houses wherein people actually live, there are signs of life.  There is the pile of shoes under the table (well, that’s where I keep my shoes, anyway) and there are magazines, and there are books with markers in them, and there are laptops on the coffee table beside little piles of earrings.  The cushions have been known to live most of their lives on the floor or tossed behind the sofa.  Sometimes there’s an indentation on one end of the sofa arm because if the sofa is comfortable, people lie down on it.  Why isn’t there ever any cat hair on the furniture in those pictures?  What’s a home without a cat?

The kitchens are always pristine in magazine pictures.  You never see bowls of cat food and spilled water on the floors.  You never see spilled cereal mixed with cat hair and dust under the kitchen counters.  People walk across kitchen floors barefooted and never have to stop to flick off “something” clinging to the sole of their foot.

You never see ten thousand boxes of half-eaten cereal sitting around in a magazine picture.  The tables are always absolutely clear and clean, with perhaps a bowl of fruit or a vase of fresh flowers.  In my house, a bowl of fruit would last about ten minutes, and although I love fresh flowers in the house, I chose to have cats, and cats love fresh flowers, too.  In fact, they refer to a vase of fresh flowers as “the salad bar.”  Sigh.

Also?  Those magazine rooms always have curtains at the windows.  I’ve never had curtains.  However, I will have them soon enough.

We’re moving.  But I digress.  I’m also scared of the concept.

Having only to choose, and it’s a choice we are all free to make, I have chosen to LIVE in my house and to encourage others to do likewise.  We could do better, naturally, and not a day goes by when I don’t wish for just a little touch of magazine perfection, but ultimately?  We live here.  And if you stop by – and I certainly hope you do – I want you to make yourself at home, too.  Keep your shoes on; YOU are more important than a speck of dirt your shoes might track in.  (I never feel really welcome if I’m told to remove my shoes.)  (If you have white carpet, that’s a choice YOU made.)  (Not even if it were free.)  (Nope.)  I love my guests more than I care about a carpet.  Besides, I’d rather vacuum up a little dirt later than have to smell your feet all night.

I am always so very sorry for children who live in a house with white carpet, unless the adults who chose it aren’t really all that fussed about keeping it white.

We are currently downsizing to the max here.  My big house is packed to the gills with the accumulation of many years, and the house we are renovating from the skin out is a LOT smaller.  I am not a person who can live sanely with clutter and piles of “stuff,” (I read magazines with scissors in hand and the minute I finish, it goes in the recycle bin) and my husband saves everything.  You’ve seen “Clash of the Titans?”  (The original; not that insipid remake.)  We are the Titans.  I am also the Kraken.  And I have been released.

You’ve been warned.

People have been shopping at my house via FreeCycle like mad these past few months.  Do any of you need anything?  Whatever it is, I bet there’s one here, somewhere.

In the meantime, come on in. The love seat is occupied, but you can sit on the orange sofa. Put your feet up on the coffee table. Sure, you can take your drink into the living room. We live in this house. While you are here, you can live in it, too.

Pity the house that discourages comfort and living.  Pity the sanitized magazine house.

I much prefer a home.

Dear house in town: Steel your nerves.   We’re coming to turn you into a home.  (I’m sure you’re already breathing easier with all that ghastly wallpaper gone.)

The lady thought for a while about stuffing both cats in the crockpot and serving them up for a weekend brunch, but decided to forgive them, clean the carpet, hang the mirror, and pretend nothing bad had happened at all.

After all, once a lady has found a nice, big, strong stud, any ending is BOUND to be a happy one.

The end.        

P.S.  P.U.

1.  My two cats follow me all over the house, and lie down to nap only when I sit.  They fight over who gets to nap on the table by my left arm.  The loser naps on my feet.

2.  My BlogHer tiara is beside my laptop.  I might wear it on occasion.

3.  Everyone neat and pretty?  NEAT AND PRETTY!  Today is Tuesday!  You know what that means!  (Every Tuesday I lie in wait for my husband to say “Today is Tuesday” just so I can finish the quote!)  Yes, I was so obsessed with the original Mickey Mouse Club as a child that I would pull my little chair as close to the tv screen as possible and positively quiver with anticipation.  I wore my Mickey Mouse ears, propped my Mouseketeer doll against my feet, and held my Mouseguitar in my lap.  To this day I can still hum the Mouseketeer song backwards, because, being me, that’s how I liked to turn the little handle on the guitar and play the song.

4.  I did the same thing with my Jack-in-the-box – turned the handle backwards and memorized the tune both ways. The “Jack” only annoyed me; he interrupted the melody!

5.  We have a few fragile Christmas ornaments that play music when you turn the tiny handle.  It takes a lot of will power for me NOT to do the backwards melody thing with them.  I have a feeling it would break them, and that’s the only thing that holds me back.  If I thought I could blame the cats, I might do it anyway.

6.  Blog Indiana is in a few days.  I’m really looking foward to it!  There are still a few tickets available; why don’t YOU go, too?  I’ll share my SweeTarts with you!  (What’s a seminar without SweeTarts?)

7.  Does anybody know what happened to Opie’s mother?

8.  I am an unbelievable nitpicker when it comes to continuity in plotlines.   Continuity is important, even in a tv show.  For example, if someone has a sister in one show, that character should not be portrayed as an only child in other segments.  If someone’s wife is named Mildred in several episodes, that same wife should not be referred to as Lorraine later on.  If a man’s  son is a dentist whose wife has a baby girl in one episode,  that same man should not be portrayed as having only a daughter in a later show.  Bonus points if you know which show.

9.    Betty Suarez’s nerdy boyfriend Henry?  That guy who always said “It’s just something I know”?  I thought he was one adorable sexy dude until he got his OTHER girlfriend pregnant.  Then I just thought he was an idiot.

10.  I do love a good book-on-tape in the car!   My husband made fun of my mega-beloved unabridged Jane Eyre book-on-cd until his brain became accustomed to the language and he got hooked on the plotline.  But I’ll never tell.

It’s after 4 a.m. , so G’night, all.

Obi’s Sister

I was ambushed overnight by Maggie’s Notebook. You find out the most interesting things about folks by playing along with these things. So now I have to share 7 things I love. Like Maggie,

I’m going to play this a bit differently because all of us will probably say we love our God, we love our family, we love our country, we love our friends, or some variation of this, and we all love to blog, so I’ll say those are my first loves, and here are the next 7:

Sounds like a plan to me, too. Here goes:

1.  I love to go to writing conferences.  All kinds, in all sorts of places.  I have never NOT learned something really important and helpful at a conference.  I am one of those odd people who go to a conference to go to the conference.  I am seldom tempted to cut out early or skip a session to go shopping.  In fact, I think the only time I EVER did anything like that was at BlogHer 08, when Shannon, Kim* and I cut a keynote and skipped over to Chinatown, and then met Fausta at a sushi bar.  But then, any of you would do the same if it meant you could hang out with Shannon, Kim, and Fausta.  Sigh.

2.  I love Wordpress.  I know, I’m a geek.  But I really do love Wordpress.  Thank you, Matt Mullenweg.

3.  I love nuts, berries, and fresh fruit.  I channel Yogi Bear daily.  I also love fresh lemons, and I do not put sugar on them. I adore tart things.  Sour things.  Explains a lot, huh.

4.  I love to bake homemade breads of all kinds, and pies.  However, I do not eat bread or pies.  In fact, I do not care for most breads or sweets.  Once in a while I’ll have a hot roll – go nuts, Google – or a Snickers bar, but diabetes is a hard master and will not usually let me indulge.  Fortunately, I seldom want to.  I just love to create them.

5.  I love books and music.  They are so entwined around my heart and soul and so blended with the blood in my veins, that I can not even imagine a life without them.  People who do not read or listen to music are missing out; they’re lacking.  There is no adequate substitute for books and music.  Those who choose a life without either or both have chosen to live a life of  “lacking.”  It is beyond my comprehension.  Also, such people are boring and insipid.  I think this is because they have chosen not to enhance themselves with other people, other places, other times, and other dimensions.  Real life can take us only just so far; we need books and music to take us farther.

6.  I love a good turn of phrase.  I can be swept off my feet by it.  I can be swayed and influenced and converted and my vote can be purchased and my virginity can be compromised. . . .um, pretend you didn’t read that part. . . . Language is power, and a pen is more powerful than any Ollivander wand.  I love wit and whimsy and sarcasm.  I love a quotation that knocks my socks off.  I love WORDS.  I love their meanings and their origins.  I love all the things that can be done with them.  I love making them into adjectives and adverbs and nouns.  I love the “kick” of a strategically placed interjection.  I love how the choice of a tiny preposition can change the focus of an entire book.  I love how a comma can turn a legal contract into the opposite of what a non-careful reader believes it to be.  I love dictionaries.  I love to play with a thesaurus.  I love the preciseness of grammar.  Even more, I love how someone who KNOWS HOW can take that preciseness and twist it, toss it, and tie it into a knot.  Um, I teach writing.

7.  I love cats.  They are purry, furry, quirky, loving  little people.  They only thing I don’t love about cats is scooping clumps out of the litter box.

There ya go.  If anybody else wants to do this, please let me know so I can find out all about you.  I promise to use this knowledge only for good.

* Please go to Kim’s blog and tell her Happy Birthday.  I love her and so will you.  She is absolutely beautiful, inside and out.

Oh, the weed eater didn’t slash me this time – it seems there’s this little thing called a “guard” that you’re supposed to include when you put the thing together, who knew? -  but I do have me a real talent for finding and liquifying large batches of poison ivy, splattering the essence all over myself and pretty much guaranteeing disfigurement for PEOPLE to see.  I generally do this right before something wonderful, wherein I really, really want to make a good impression on people I totally adore even before I meet them, and even more so after I do.  What I inevitably do is make people scratch their own heads and wonder where in the world I could have gotten St. Vitus Dance in this day and age.

I’m so excited about Science in the Rockies and BlogHer and seeing the Grogans that I can’t even sleep at night.  Airplanes, trains, and right in my own home!  I love people!  I love learning things!  I love everything right now, honestly.

Except my weedeater.                                                                                                                                                  

See you soon.  I’ll be the big blonde chick standing in the corner trying not to scratch.

1.  Today was the first day of summer session.  So far, so good; my students seem very nice.

2.  I might be falling in love with “my” treadmill at the gym.

3.  The tractor is fixed, and the grass has been cut.

However,

4.  I looked out the window and couldn’t see the roses.  Might be time to break out the weed-eater.

5.  The people next door have tiny kittens.  I watched them frolicking in their front yard today – I could feel the uncontrollable “awwwwwwws” swelling up so fast, I almost choked.

6.  Schwan’s has some caramel pecan praline ice cream that’s pretty good.  You just watch: now that I’ve said that publically, they’ll discontinue it.  Story of my life.  (still mourning Bruester’s chocolate pecan, and still haven’t been back since whatever blundering idiot decided to mark it off the menu.)

7.  Still haven’t unpacked my suitcase.  I’m not sick or anything, just lazy.

8.  I learned so much at WordCamp!  It was simply amazingly great.  One thing I learned:  on Ten Things Tuesday, I don’t really HAVE to have ten things.

9.  I am so hungry, even the raisins are starting to look good.  And, I loathe raisins.  They look like dead bugs; they feel like those big Halloween wax buck teeth we used to chew up after they’d served their purpose, and they taste like spongy ear wax.

1.  I love my cats because I enjoy my home, and little by little,  they become its visible soul.  –Jean Cocteau

2.  The smallest feline is a masterpiece.  –Leonardo da Vinci

3.  Cats don’t like change without their consent.  –Roger A. Caras

4.  Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds.  –Jean Burden

5.  Cats are rather delicate creatures, and they are subject to a good many different ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia.  –Joseph Wood Krutch

6.  If you want to know the character of a man, find out what his cat thinks of him. –Anonymous

7.  If I called her she would pretend not to hear, but would come a few minutes later when it could appear that she had thought of doing so first.  –Arthur Weigall

8.  Even the stupidest cat seems to know more than any dog.  –Eleanor Clark

9.  My cats are compromised.  I do not entirely trust them – they may be spies, like dolphins, reporting to some unknown authority.  –Jan Morris

10.  They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription.  I say, “Can he name a kitten?” –Samuel Butler

11.  The little furry buggers are just deep, deep wells you throw all your emotions into.  -Bruce Schimmel

12.  The cat has too much spirit to have no heart.  –Ernest Menault

13.  It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can’t see.  –Eleanor Farjeon

14.  If we treated every9one we meet with the same affection we bestow upon our favorite cat, they, too, would purr.  –Martin Buxbaum

15.  I wonder what goes through his mind when he sees us peeing in his water bowl.  –Penny Ward Moser

16.  If a cat does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence.  –Will Cuppy

17.  By and large, people who enjoy teaching animals to roll over will find themselves happier with a dog.  –Barbara Holland

18.  To err is human, to purr is feline.  –Robert Byrne

19.  The cat lets Man support her.  But unlike the dog, she is no handlicker.  Furthermore, unlike Man’s other great good friend, the horse, the cat is no sweating serf of Man.  The only labor she condescends to perform is to catch mice and rats, and that’s fun.  –Vance Packard

20.  Cats have intercepted my footsteps at the ankle for so long that my gait, both at home and on tour, has been compared to that of a man wading through low surf.  –Roy Blount, Jr.

21.  A child is a person who can’t understand why someone would give away a perfectly good kitten.  –Doug Larsen

22.  Purring would seem to be, in her case, an automatic safety-valve device for dealing with happiness overflow.  –Monica Edwards

23.  Cats are smarter than dogs.  You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.  –Jeff Valdez

24.  A meow massages the heart.  –Stuart McMillan

25.  With the qualities of cleanliness, discretion, affection, patience, dignity, and courage that cats have, how many of us, I ask you, would be capable of being cats?  –Fernant Mery

26.  When I play with my cat who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?  –Michel de Montaigne

27.  Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they’re glad to see you.  Rudimace always peed in our shoes.  –W.H. Auden

28.  There is no more intrepid explorer than a kitten.  –Jules Champfleury

29.  Cats always know whether people like or dislike them.  they do not always care enough to do anything about it.  –Winifred Carriere

30.  Always the cat remains a little beyond the limits we try to set for him in our blind folly.  –Andre Norton

31.  No matter how tired or wretched I am, a pussycat sitting in a doorway can divert my mind.  –Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

32.  Balanchine has trained his cat to perform brilliant jetes and tours en L’air; he says that at last he has a body worth choreographing for.  –Bernard Taper

33.  Cats, like women, should be respected as individuals rather than admired as decoration, but there’s no harm, given a choice, in taking up with a strikingly attractive specimen of either.  –Barbara Holland

34.  God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger.  –Fernand Mery

35.  Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.  –Dan Greenburg

36.  If cats could talk, they wouldn’t.  –Nan Porter

37.  Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges.  Cats have the courage to live by them.  –Jim Davis

38.  Artists like cats; soldiers like dogs.  –Desmond Morris

39.  Cats are the ultimate narcissists.  You can tell this because of all the time they spend on personal grooming.  Dogs aren’t like this.  a dog’s idea of personal grooming is to roll in a dead fish.  –James Gorman

40.  When it comes to the advantages of cats versus dogs as pets, there is no competition.  Try going away for a weekend, leaving your German Shepherd alone with a bowl of dry food, some water, and a litter box.  –Robert Stearns

41.  Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit.  –William S. Burroughs

42.  I’ve met many thinkers and many cats, but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.  –Hippolyte Taine

43.  A cat is there when you call her – if she doesn’t have something better to do.  –Bill Adler

44.  An ordinary kitten will ask more questions than any five-year-old.  –Carl Van Vechten

45.  Everything that moves, serves to interest and amuse a cat.  He is convinced that nature is busying herself with his diversion; he can conceive of no other purpose in the universe.  –F.A. Paradis de Moncrif

46.  No animals should ever jump upon the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain he can hold his own in the conversation.  –Fran Lebowitz

47.  Did St. Francis really preach to the birds?  Whatever for?  If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.  –Rebecca West

48.  No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape can ever toally remove his fur from your couch.  –Leo Dworken

49.  The playful kitten, with its pretty little tigerish gambols, is infinitely more amusing than half the people one is obliged to live with in the world.  –Lady Sydney Morgan

50.  Most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness.  I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked about the house with a saintly expression.  –Beverly Nichols

51.  My cat does not talk as respectfully to me as I do to her.  –Colette

52.  Every cat is really the most beautiful woman in the room.  –E.V. Lucas

53.  Cleanliness in the cat world is usually a virtue put above godliness.  –Carl Van Vechten

54.  Your cat will never threaten your popularity by barking at three in the morning.  He won’t attack the mailman or eat the drapes, although he may climb the drapes to see how the room looks from the ceiling.  –Helen Powers

55.  No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.  –Abraham Lincoln

56.  A home without a cat – and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat – may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove its title?  –mark Twain

57.  Cats don’t bark and act brave when they see something small in fur or feathers, they kill it.  Dogs tend to bravado.  They’re braggarts.  In the great evolutionary drama the dog is Sergeant Bilko, the cat is Rambo9.  –James Gorman

58.  There is something about the presence of a cat. . . that seems to take the bite out of being alone.  –Louis J. Camuti, DVM

59. Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.  –Joseph Wood Krutch

60.  At dinner time he would sit in a corner, concentrating, and suddely they would say, “Time to feed the cat,’ as if it were their own idea.  –Lilian Jackson Braun

61.  The cat does not offer services.  The cat offers itself.  Of course he wants care and shelter.  You don’t buy love for nothing.  Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.  –William S. Burroughs

62.  Meow is like aloha – it can mean anything.  –Hank Ketchum

63.  No tame animal has lost less of its dignity or maintained more of its ancient reserve.  The domestic cat might rebel tomorrow.    –William Conway

64.  Living with a cat is like being married to a career woman who can take domesticity or let it alone, so you’d better be nice to her.  –Margaaret Cooper Gay

65.  I will always remember the olive-eyed tabby who taught me that not all relationships are meant to last a lifetime.  Sometimes just an hour is enough to touch your heart.  –Barbara L. Diamond

66.  Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.  –Garrison Keillor

67.  If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but deteriorate the cat.  –Mark Twain

68.  If a dog jumps up into your lap, it is because he is fond of you, but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.  –Alfred North Whitehead

69.  I have found my love of cats most helpful in understanding women.  –John Simon

70.  Unlike us, cats never outgrow their delight in cat capacities, nor do they settle finally for limitations.  Cats, I think, live out their lives fulfilling their expectations.  –Irving Townsend

71.  Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow.  –George F. Will

72.  A house without either a cat or a dog is the house of a scoundrel.  –Portuguese Proverb

73.  Refined and delicate natures understand the cat.  Women, poets, and artists hold it in great esteem, for they recognize the exquisite delicacy of its nervous system; indeed, only coarse natures fail to discern the natural distinction of the animal.  –Jules Champfleury

74.  A man has to work so hard so that something of his personality stays alive.  A tomcat has it so easy; he has only to spray and his presence is there for years on rainy days.  –Albert Einstein

75.  Dogs eat.  Cats dine.  –Ann Taylor

76.  If you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is keep a pair of cats.  –Aldous Huxley

77.  Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel.  True, and they have many other fine qualities as well.  –Missy Dizick

78.  Cats are living adornments.  –Edwin Lent

79.  There’s no need for a piece of sculpture in a home that has a cat.  –Wesley Bates

80. There are few things in life more heartwarming than to be welcomed by a cat. –Tay Hohoff

81. There are two means of refuge from the misery of life – music and cats. –Albert Schweitzer

82. The cat could very well be man’s best friend but would never stoop to admitting it. –Doug Larson

83. After scolding one’s cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word. And has filed it for reference. –Charlotte Gray

84. A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings. –William Ralph Inge

85. The reason cats climb is so that they can look down on almost every other animal – it’s also the reason they hate birds. –K.C. Buffington

86. A cat is an example of sophistication minus civilization. –Author Unknown

87. I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through. –Jules Verne

88. I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. –Edgar Allan Poe

89. Are we really sure the purring is coming from the kitty and not from our very own hearts? –Emme Woodhull-Bäche

90. The cat is the only animal which accepts the comforts but rejects the bondage of domesticity. –Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon

91. The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends. –Saki

92. You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. –Albert Einstein

93. When your kitty purrs to you, doesn’t it break your heart that you can’t purr back? –Candea Core-Starke

94. There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person. –Dan Greenberg

95. Cats can be cooperative when something feels good, which, to a cat, is the way everything is supposed to feel as much of the time as possible. –Roger Caras

96. People meeting for the first time suddenly relax if they find they both have cats. And plunge into anecdote. –Charlotte Gray

97. Cats never strike a pose that isn’t photogenic. –Lillian Jackson Braun

98. When a cat chooses to be friendly, it’s a big deal, because a cat is picky. –Mike Deupree

99. If purring could be encapsulated, it’d be the most powerful anti-depressant on the pharmaceutical market. –Alexis F. Hope

100. I put down my book, The Meaning of Zen, and see the cat smiling into her fur as she delicately combs it with her rough pink tongue. “Cat, I would lend you this book to study but it appears you have already read it.” She looks up and gives me her full gaze. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she purrs, “I wrote it.”  –Dilys Laing

I’ll stop now, not because I can’t think of any more, but because if I don’t stop now, I never will.