Cat in a Tub

Yes. This is kind of the highlight of the week: Patty sitting in a plastic tub. I was using it to store the slate with which I was rebuilding the indoor fountain (more on that later) and, once finished, I set it in the entry with a mind to take it back into the garage on my next trip down there. Before that could happen, though, she decided it was a perfect place to rest. I put an old kitchen towel in the bottom and now it is hers. I'm not quite sure how we'll work it into the decor, but she's sooooo happy when she's in it.

Patty is maturing quite nicely. She has learned not to get up onto the dining room table or the kitchen counters or the coffee table (at least when there's someone there to see her). She has also learned that food is only hers if it is in a dish on the floor. The same goes with stuff to play with: if something's on the floor, it's fair game for a toy.

She has, however, gotten creative with this last one: if she can find something on a chair or one of our desks, she pushes it off onto the floor and, voilà, a toy is born. Her latest discovery is rubber bands. At first I was worried she would chew on them, but she only holds them in her mouth, tosses them into the air, then bats them around on the floor.

Marcel, our dour and grumpy 11-year-old cat, has taken to playing with Patty, and now they are pretty good buddies, chasing each other around the house (especially up and down the stairs). When she discovers a new toy, Marcel feels obligated to engage the object as well. This warms my heart, as one of the reasons for getting a new and younger cat was to get Marcel out of lying around and sleeping all day.

And now to the fountain: yes, I completed it and it's in the corner of the dining room (our prosperity corner, feng shui-wise), with the little cinnabar frog atop it holding a gold coin with a red jewel center in its mouth (although I'm certain there is no cinnabar, gold or jewels involved; more like resin, brass and red glass: it's the spirit of the thing, you understand). So once again there is the sound of burbling water in the house.

For those of you who are waiting for the before and after pictures of the new floors, I'm afraid you'll just have to wait (you can see a bit of the bamboo flooring in the cat-in-a-tub photo above). It seems things just haven't found their new homes yet and, in the disruption, we have begun a campaign of cleaning and organizing all the storage spaces in the house, which means there are piles of things on the dining room table pretty much constantly. The kitchen is nearly done, with three boxes already packed for donation to Out of the Closet (for out-of-towners, that's a thrift store that raises money for AIDS charities) and two empty shelves available for reorganization.

Another reason for holding off on the photos: we are supposed to be getting a new sofa in the next week or so. We ordered it three weeks ago today, so I'll be checking up on it with the store. Our present sofa is about 40 years old and looks every day of its age. Steve has arranged to pay a guy from his work $50 bucks to haul it away, so we're just waiting to find out when the new one arrives to coordinate all this. Once the sofa is in, we'll be looking for an area rug for it, and then something to replace the coffee table (the sofa is big and we're going to have to rescale the space for it). The entire reveal may very well be delayed into next year, depending on how things go.

On the job front, there is no news. Postings of open positions have dried up in the last few weeks. The jobs I have put in applications for no longer show up on the online job sites, so I'm hoping my application is in a review pile somewhere and the process is just taking a while.

I've been kind of depressed the last couple days because of the lack of movement, especially since I now have a functioning website up and running for review, and I have spruced up my portfolio site with a recommendations page and links to my online work (which also includes cousin Robin's website, even though it's just a single page with her reel on it as of now).

But I try to boost my morale by remembering that most of the jobs I've gotten started in October, November and January, and that lots of corporate entities don't move on new hires until they know what their year-end is going to look like. There's a great job out there for me, I know it, and I only have to land one. But I am getting tired of eeking by on unemployment, scrimping to try and save as much of the inheritance for investment in the house and retirement savings. Being employed again will be great, because we used a fair chunk of the inherited money to pay off debt, so those bills won't be there when I actually start making an income.

And all those thoughts and worries are why I'm up at one o'clock in the morning writing this stupid blog. But I do want to keep everyone abreast of the trivialities of my existence. I really do.