Today at Magical Words I’m talking about my particular variation on the writing lifestyle. And next week the plan is to be there with an essay about plot, so stay tuned.
Here be kittens. CinCin:
And LoZo, in a bit of a glamor shot:
Kelly and I have been discussing the crucial issue of their portmanteau. CinZo? Or LorenCin? (pronounced ChinZo / Laurentian.) They have a follow-up vet appointment this weekend, and will probably get scheduled for neutering very soon.
Points have been awarded for:
Still required for level-up:
CinZo are about to lose their feral appellation, I think. We started giving them their wet food by hand a few days ago, and not surprisingly this has chilled them out considerably on the issue of whether we are big scary giants who will eat them. Petting them induces purring and they will snuggle for as long as thirty seconds at a time. (Hey, they’ve got important pouncing to get back to!)
They have also figured out the sandbox, as far as we can tell, and thus have the run of the apartment as of bedtime last night. Finally, the TV no longer terrifies them: I subjected them to three hours of The Life of Birds on the weekend.
They aren’t yet convinced that being sung to is a particularly good use of anyone’s time, but one short week after being pulled out from under a porch in Etobicoke, it’s all looking happy, secure and friendly.
Now the question is: can we get them to accept snuggly worship from our friends? Perhaps especially our Peter Watts shaped friends?
The new feline overlords have slowed me down considerably. They move at the speed of zoom, of course, except when they’re blissfully unconscious in a heap. But everything I do takes longer. Cooking, showering, eating–all of it gets interrupted by slack-jawed goggling at the babies, interspersed with fits of trying to capture every single instant of their little lives with the camera.
Yesterday my phone developed the electronic equivalent of a hacking cough, all of five minutes before our provider called to offer Kelly a deal on replacement gadgetry. So! In addition to replacing the thermostat, getting the babies to the vet, having the countertops repaired and maybe doing some actual work, Kelly and I are acquiring and customizing new toys.
It’s hard to be sad about this, of course, even if it is another damned thing to do.
Launch of the Kitten Channel: We currently have just-weaned three kittens in the house, now named Lorenzo, Chinchilla, and Bailey. This isn’t a permanent thing. We never agreed to take the whole litter, but they all needed rescuing. Bailey will go to his forever home as soon as he’s seen a vet. It’s both a lot of work and a lot of fun. You’ve probably seen the cuteness. Here’s Renzo.
Getting them out of Etobicoke involved driving out there with the woman who’s been keeping an eye on them (and their feral mom) and then spending an hour trying to find and coax Bailey out from under an enormous patio deck. The crawlspace down there was filled with peculiar hoses, making him hard to spot–so there was a lot of lying on belly, hanging my head off the deck, and peering around upside-down while trying to keep my glasses from sliding off my face. I’ve bruised the area around my sternum as a result. It’s a small price to pay for adorable fluff-bundles.
Change is change:
Our move to Dua Central happened, unbelievably, just over three weeks ago. The house is nicely unpacked and in many ways it looks as though we’ve been there for years. I’m struggling to find and establish the bits and pieces of a daily routine, to make automatic a number of the things I do daily, the better to have space in my brain for more important things. It has been strangely tiring; after the events of the past thirteen months, I’m simply looking forward to getting to a place where I don’t feel dislocated.
Breathe and Stretch, Stretch and Breathe:
The move also brought another big change, in the form of another new yoga studio. Downward Dog was just a little too far to go now that we’re further northeast, and so Kelly and I are trying out classes at Yyoga, a Vancouver-based studio that’s physically close to hand. I never set out to be a connoisseur of yoga instructors, but it has been a real thing: go to class, try someone out, go again, and ponder where and how each class and teacher fits into the framework of my life. Then lather, rinse, repeat.
The goal here is to find a selection of folks I can happily take classes from three to four times a week.
We took six weeks off yoga starting in March, because of Texas and moving, and all sorts of tiny complaints were cropping up with my body. Now we’re back at it, many of those are now receding; my body is starting to feel as I expect it to… in a good way. It’s a powerful experience, a reminder that the yoga thing isn’t just for fun or relaxation. Delightful though it may be, it’s also mandatory at this point in my existence.