My Kingdom for a Furminator

I have wads of cat fur languidly drifting across all of my hardwood floors. We brush and we brush, and alas, petting her still yields clumps of the stuff.

Sounds like an exciting weekend, right? No doubt you're jealous. But I am working up to mowing my lawn and swiffering/vacuuming up this fur everywhere. I'm also noodling around on some writing that I'm pulling together for grad school applications. I want it all to be maximally eloquent, moving, etc. etc.

It's surprisingly difficult. I feel like all of my brain cells have been sucked dry, such that the only appealing thing for me to do is sit amid the cat hair and generalized clutter, eat ice cream, and watch past seasons of Mad Men on itunes. I imagine that this is how Jane Austen played it.

Laura's House of Bird Drama

If they're not in my basement, they're wee young babies cast out of their fallen nests, hunkered by my back door. What do you do with that? I fear it won't end well.

Because You Need More Evidence That Our Healthcare System Sucks

I watched Frontline last night: their special, "Sick Around America." I continue to be baffled by opposition to healthcare reform, particularly when you look at it from an efficiency standpoint. Even if you have no moral qualms about the suffering of some unfortunate soul who didn't have the proper virtue and forsight not to be uninsured, can you really argue that it makes sense to spend so goddamned much once people get so sick that they require immediate medical care?

I mean, they profiled a woman who suffered from lupus and who spent years bouncing around trying to get coverage. Consequently, she received no regular treatment to allow her to keep her disease in check. Ultimately, she wound up receiving better than half a dozen surgeries before she finally died. The cost for this futile treatment was close to a million dollars. How stupid is that?

More Graffiti

This is really starting to piss me off. Is the deal now that every time they wash off our garages, kids come and make sure they're marked again?

Pre-Vacation Celebratory Random Song List

1. two characters in search of a country song, the magnetic fields
2. somebody made for me, emmit rhodes
3. quicksand (demo version - 1971), david bowie
4. running the world, jarvis cocker
5. that teenage feeling, neko case
6. hate & war, the clash
7. getting ready, patty griffin
8. this fire, franz ferdinand
9. knock 'em out, lily allen
10. this wheel's on fire, the band

And once I manage to migrate my music off the old pc and onto the mac, I should be grooving even more.

Happily, it appears to be a quiet day here, so the key is to power through to get to the good stuff. Hope you all have a good weekend in store.

More Reasons I'm Anxious to Go on Vacation

1. More graffiti on the ole garage, twice in about a week, in fact. Happily, the online complaint filing for the city is super-speedy, and in both cases, it was cleaned within a day.

2. Do you know what difficulty arises from attempting a multi-prong medication administration on a finicky cat? Said cat starts developing an interest in shopping around for more interesting offerings, that's what happens. Tuna? Again? Bah. How about those smelly treats? Or those scrambled eggs you're making. Milk? Liked it for a few days, but today . . . more in the mood for crunchy salmon. Longing for the days of tossing out a goddamned bowl of food and calling it a day.

My Job These Days Is Beginning to Feel a Bit Like This

With me being the one with the flailing arms.

The drama will pass, but damn, am I tired of people at the moment.

Finally, Tomatoes and Basil and Green Beans, Oh My

It's amazing how much better tomatoes taste from your own garden.

Why Perhaps It's Best Not to Send the Vegetarian Out to Find Your Meat-Related Products

I spent about an hour hunting through the grocery store for pizza sausage and pepperoni, then having located the relevant products, cross comparing and mulling over the options (mild? spicy? Italian? Italian-style?). Has there always been this many meat products, or has sausage gone the way of toothpaste and proliferated into a dizzying assortment from the days of yore?

Related to the above: We're going on vacation! For a solid week, la famille de Laura will be ensconced in a lake-adjacent vacation house. Certain parties will be getting a crash course on la famille de Laura, but as we are all fabulous and fun people, I expect the crash course more to resemble a beer-drinking class than high-school calculus.

T-minus six days and counting.