Incoherent Scribblings

I suffered a Movable Type meltdown and am converting everything over to Wordpress so things might be goofy for a while. Bear with me!

I did manage to import my archives from MT (thank god A. reminds me to backup!) and only had to add a few entries and comments by hand. I will work on my skins tomorrow.

Why does it seem that every time I go on vacation my blog acts up when I get back? Happened last time I didn’t update for a week too…

Testing… 1 2 3

Will someone please try and post a comment? I need to see if it works! If you try and aren’t successful, please email me at blondelibrarian at gmail dot com and let me know. Thanks!

I have often said that if my cat Mouse were a human she would be one of those women that all normal women love to hate: She would be beautiful and thin. She would chain smoke and be able to eat all she wanted but never gain a pound. She would be sickly sweet most of the time and have a way about her that would draw men to her like flies. However, if she were the slightest bit annoyed she would turn around and rip out your eyes and if you did something that she didn’t like she wouldn’t hesitate to show you her displeasure.

I say this, because except for the chain smoking part, that is exactly how Mouse is. She is a beautiful Maine Coon Cat and almost everyone who meets her adores her. She is the sweetest kitty in the world most of the time. She loves to sit on your lap and will purr for hours at a time while you pet her. But while you are petting her, if you pet the wrong spot or rub her the wrong way, she will turn around and sink her teeth into your arm with little to no warning.

Nevertheless, in addition to her wonderful personality and that random show of attitude that I love, Mouse has one attribute I have never been fond of: And that is, she produces a hairball almost daily.

Though I have learned to live with her hairballs after almost twelve years and by now am familiar with the warning signs, I have never been able to determine a rhyme or reason for her hairballs. Sometimes she throws up directly after she eats, other times she will suddenly wake up from a deep sleep to eject a hairball, and still other times she will just stop in the middle of the floor and puke.

I have tried everything to get her hairballs under control: She eats special hairball control cat food, I brush her almost everyday, I have tried to give her hairball control paste, and I have even tried castor oil and Vaseline. Nothing helps. So I just follow behind her and clean them up. Sometimes it can be exasperating, but in all honesty I don’t find it any worse than changing the litter box.

It isn’t cleaning up the hairballs that gets to me sometimes: It is the places in which she produces them. Most of the time she just throws up on our tile floor and that is easy to deal with: Just grab some toilet paper, wipe them up, and flush them away. When she throws up on the couch or on the bed I naturally get a little more irritated, because then I don’t just have to clean up the hairball, I have to wash the articles that she threw up on. Once she got into the closet while I was at work and threw up inside my laundry basket and boy did that tick me off! Luckily for me though, once the actual hairball is removed the bile that accompanies it washes out relatively easily.

However, I must say that her hairball from yesterday morning really took the cake. I was sitting behind the closed doors of the kitchen eating my breakfast when I heard that familiar gagging sound. I knew she was in the hallway, but since it is tiled I just continued eating my breakfast. I have learned I can’t stop her when she is going to throw up, so I just let her do it and when she is done I clean it up.

After I finished my breakfast I carefully stepped into the hallway (you never know where the next hairball will be) and scanned the area. She had produced her hairball under the bench on the mat where we keep our shoes. It didn’t seem like a big deal until I noticed a brown stain and that oh-so-lovely smell of fresh hairball coming directly from INSIDE my NEW Nikes!!!

I have gotten back into my stitching groove and I must say I am glad of it. I only stitched about 6 hours during our time in Bulgaria and I really missed it.

Actually, I discovered something about my stitching while I was on holiday, and that is that I actually find stitching soothing! This may sound funny considering how many of you say that you find stitching relaxing, but I never really thought it relaxed me. Obviously I didn’t find it stressful otherwise I wouldn’t do it, but I thought I merely enjoyed it.

However, one day while we were away I was feeling a bit antsy and stressed because hubby was running around like a chicken with his head cut off about the conference and it rubbed off on me. As soon as I got hubby on his way, I sat down and listened to my mp3 player while stitching for a couple of hours.

Voilà! When I finally took a break I couldn’t believe how tranquil I felt. It was like I had reached a state of zen in that time and all I could think was it was a direct result of my stitching. When I mentioned this to hubby later he couldn’t believe that I had just discovered this: Ever since I picked up stitching again it was obvious to him how relaxing it is to me.

As it is, today was a happy dance day for me. I finished my second Margaret Sherry design, “Purr-pendicular.” I don’t have much to say about it except that I love the way these designs stitch up so quickly. “Purr-pendicular” took me a mere 16.5 hours! I am not sure what I will do with it: Probably frame it and put it beside “Purr-plexed.”

Tomorrow I will go back to “Passing Admirers.” Now that “Purr-pendicular” is done I am anxious to start on Maggie. The question is, should I work her from the top down or the bottom up? I guess it will depend if I am in the mood to stitch her hat, hair, and head tomorrow or her dress! We’ll see…

As we all know, cats are very vain creatures. It was this very vanity that resulted in the infamous cat’s meow.

For you see, long ago in ancient Egypt when cats were worshipped they could also talk and their favorite thing to say was “Me so pretty.” (Hey I said they could talk. I didn’t say they had good grammar!) They said it whenever they happened to stroll by a mirror, when they were being groomed, while they were guarding the grain storage from mice, after they had dinner, before they were tucked into bed at night, and pretty much at any other time they felt like it.

By and by came a queen who enjoyed favor with the gods and goddesses, but didn’t especially care for cats. She grew weary of hearing them say “Me so pretty” over and over again and finally had a conference with the gods and goddesses voicing her displeasure. The queen learned that the gods and goddesses were also tired of the cats’ vanity. So they decided to give her a special power to punish the cats for their vanity once and for all. With her new power, the queen would be able to take away the cats’ power of speech, except for the last word they uttered when she cast her spell.

The next morning, the queen went for a walk in her garden and found that instead of guarding the precious grain storage from mice like he was supposed to be doing, the head cat was sitting in front of a mirror and cooing “Me so beautiful,” while being groomed.

Furious, the queen decided to use her power. She swiftly came up behind the cat and as he started to say “Me so pretty” once again, she accidentally stepped on his tail right after he said “Me.” Because she stepped on his tail, in the same breath that the cat uttered “Me” it was followed by “Ow!” It was at this very moment that the queen cast her spell and the last word curse was cast on all of catkind.

From then on the only word they could utter would be “Me..Ow!”… And so it was done. The cats lost their power of speech and were demoted to having to use only one word (meow) to voice all of their feelings; whether they were happy, sad, angry, or sorry.

The moral of the story is that vanity can be painful. The End.

My Bulgarian holiday was so relaxing it was almost boring… but I had a great time nonetheless!

We had an uneventful flight to Bulgaria, even though I was temporarily stressed by the fact that we didn’t have name tags on our luggage and couldn’t seem to find any airline provided ones. Luckily our luggage arrived in Bulgaria safe and sound and because I had a hideously gaudy luggage strap wrapped around my suitcase, I had no trouble finding it.

Once we got there, the locals were friendly even though when we tried to ask them for directions we kept getting pointed in the wrong direction. This was probably due to the fact that though we had an address written down and were showing it to the people, it was in Latin letters and, if you weren’t aware, Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet! (We knew this of course, but for some reason were naïve enough to think that an address using Latin letters would be no problem for the locals.)

Several times during our vacation we were looking for something only to discover later that since we couldn’t make out the Cyrillic we had passed by it. I had meant to get an English/Bulgarian or German/Bulgarian dictionary before we left, but never got around to it. Once we got to Bulgaria we decided we really needed one but the only thing we could find was an English/Bulgarian phrase book and it wasn’t very helpful.

Our hotel was clean, about half of the staff spoke English and the other half spoke German, so we had it made! We had a great room with a view of the Black Sea that nearly took my breath away. We also had satellite TV which broadcasted The Cartoon Network in English. (That in and of itself nearly made my vacation!) We had a private bathroom and air conditioning. (For those of you that think this is no big deal, come to Europe some time… you will find it is a big deal!) The bed wasn’t very comfortable, but that didn’t really surprise me. I think in my entire life maybe slept in two hotel beds that were comfortable.

Though the weather wasn’t perfect, it was nice enough that I got to spend some time working on my tan. On the sunny days the beach wasn’t crowded and the sand wasn’t hot, so I got to walk barefoot in the sand (and managed to get a splinter). I had a grand time collecting sea shells and I have the intention of one day making a sea shell necklace with them.

Unfortunately, there were some cool and rainy days, but we made the most of them by visiting the town’s archaeological museum, visiting the nearby town of Nessebar, which is on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list, and buying souvenirs. My prize purchase is a Bulgarian tea set. (Amusing, considering I don’t drink tea!) We took lots and lots of pictures of both Sozopol and Nessebar and I finally used up the last roll of film on my 35mm camera.

The food was good, but the wine was better. To our delight we learned early on that Bulgaria is not a country of vegetarians. Their traditional cuisine features lots and lots of grilled meat. As staunch carnivores, A. and I were in Heaven. With almost every meal we drank a bottle of Kadarka, a sweet red wine, and had dessert.

On the last evening of A.’s conference there was a conference dinner held at a restaurant that was (as our Bulgarian guide later told us) traditionally Bulgarian. We had a typical Bulgarian meal and that evening we also got to see some traditional Bulgarian dancing and hear some traditional Bulgarian singing. Sadly we didn’t take the camera with us that night so we didn’t get any pictures of the girls in their pretty dresses or the guys in their snazzy boots.

The town wasn’t too touristy (mostly because the “season” hadn’t started yet) and I really enjoyed seeing the architecture and visiting my first Orthodox church. There are over 200 houses in the “old town” that date back to Renaissance times. Most are still lived in and are remarkably well preserved.

I was awed by the Orthodox churches. In comparison to western European cathedrals they are quite modest, but their size gives them a coziness I have never felt in the great cathedrals. And the icons… need I say more? Not only do I find them beautiful, but the depictions of the saints, in my opinion, are really different from the West.

And finally, the prices were ridiculous… in a good way! (read: CHEAP!) It was the first time since I came to Germany that I had been outside the Eurozone, so the first thing we did was change some Euros into Lev. We got almost 2 Lev to the Euro.

I must go on a slight rant here… Lately lots of people have been complaining about the Euro here. However, I think the Euro has had a deeper impact than some would admit. In A.’s conference group, we were the only ones that had changed Euros when we arrived in Bulgaria. Everyone else figured they would take Euros everywhere in Bulgaria. (For those of you not in the know: Bulgaria ISN’T a member of the EU… yet.) Obviously even though they bitch about it, the people have gotten quite used to the whole “one currency” thing… End rant

However, we didn’t think too much about the prices until our first meal. When we got the bill the price was about 30 Lev. A. remarked that wasn’t too bad, we spend more than 30 Euros in Munich for dinner. Then I reminded him that we weren’t paying 30 Euros for dinner, but 30 Lev and in actuality it was more like 15 Euros! The prices made me feel like we were in Mexico! 6 Lev for a bottle of wine, 15 Lev for a whole sack full of souvenirs, 1.70 Lev for a bottle of Coke and a candy bar… we ended up only spending a fraction of what we brought with us.

Finally our time in Sozopol was up and we headed back to Munich. Somehow we got stuck in the “kid” section of the plane and had to listen to babies crying and mothers trying to keep their kids occupied for the 2 hour duration of our trip. This began to wear on my nerves after a while, but luckily the plane ride was short and other than that uneventful.

Even though I *heart* Sozopol and will definitely be going back, I am also glad to be home and believe it or not, even after such a relaxing vacation, I still feel like I need a vacation to recover from my vacation!

(Pictures from my trip will be coming soon!)