Oops. Forgot to hit post, so this is backdated.

Today sucked. I just couldn’t get in gear, though I did manage to do dishes and clean up the house just a little bit. I just plain felt sad all day. It’s been getting worse all day, the sadness, and I guess that’s because late last Friday night was when Fuzza really took a turn for the worse.

That there’s a cat sadly howling in the back yard tonight doesn’t help at all either. I’ve run out the back door each time I have hear it, but then it’s silent again for a long while. I am wondering if it’s Momma Cat. Her and Fuzza were kitty friends, and they used to talk through the kitchen window. Maybe she’s noticed he’s gone? At any rate, it’s sort of spooking me out and making me sad at the same time. I wish I could see what neighborhood cat it is or at least where in my yard it’s hiding.

I keep hearing papers rustling under Lin’s work bench where Fuzza used to hide when he wanted to take a long interupted nap. I know it’s not just me being crazy and hearing it too. I was sitting here watching my sound activated screensaver a while ago, and the screensaver reacted to the sound. So I know there’s actually paper rustling under the work bench. I’d check it out, but I’m home alone, and it’s freaking me out a bit. It’s exactly these kinds of odd noises I use to let Fuzza check out. He was my barometer for how freaked out I should be about some strange sound in the house. Now I am left just freaking out about everything.

The emptiness of the house is really starting to bother me … to the point that I am thinking of getting another cat. It seems too soon, but now when I am home alone (which is all day every day and some evenings), I really am home alone, and I am starting to feel lonely. There isn’t anyone here to love, spoil or interact with, and apparently, left to my own devices, I will sit for hours doing nothing but stare at walls without a thought in my head. I don’t feel ready for another cat just yet, but I am thinking of going to the SPCA shelter next week. I just want to see how it feels to be around other cats, and then use that to guide my decision about how ready I am (or not). What’s funny is, I have lived just a few blocks from the SPCA shelter and driven past it at least once a week since we moved into the house almost three years ago, and I never once noticed it was there … until today. Of course, aquiring a new kitty will have to pass Lin’s approval first, and I don’t know how he’d feel about it. Maybe we can talk about it this weekend.

Meh. Better go to bed now. It’s late. I’ve been up all day.

Tequila is not an ingredient in Ceviche. In fact, there are many things which currently get splashed with tequila in local restaurants where I can safely say tequila is not at all required. Hell, if it isn’t hot and spicy, it has to have tequila on it … or both.

Also,there is no 8 oz steak on the planet that is worth $36, and don’t even look at me and tell me you are charging $32 for chicken fried steak pork chops. I will laugh at you.

Yes, yes … going to bed now. I had to finish looking at the last few menus in PDF format that I had opened up. I am still disgusted with the food choices in some of Austin’s “best” restaurants.

Friday nights, Lin and I always order delivery pizza and watch our usual science fiction shows. All of them are off season at the moment, and I am getting sick of pizza … so I decided we should go out to eat this Friday. I’ve spent an hour looking at menus on line, and this leads me to some more pet peeves. Yes, I am a little grumpy today.

No one, and I do mean no one, needs a steak that weighs more than a pound. In fact, I would go so far as to say no one needs a steak that weighs a half pound, particularly if you are planning to have hearty side dishes, like a fully loaded baked potato, for example. Personally, I can usually finish a 6 oz steak, if I don’t eat all of the side dishes, don’t have appetizers, and don’t have a salad. Well … just try finding a place that serves 6 oz steaks. I tell you, they don’t seem to exist. I would love to have a nice rare rib-eye or t-bone steak, but they only appear to be served in 16 oz and 18 oz sizes. This ticks me off.

It’s not just the steaks either … everything has to be served in HUGE sizes. It’s no wonder America is on its way to being the most obese country on the planet, and possibly the universe.

Then there is the notion that every person who lives in Texas or is visiting or passing through Texas and wants to eat a meal in a restaurant obviously wants their food to be as spicy hot as possible. There are far too many dining establishments in this town where only the salads or a few other boring options can be found to NOT have some sort of hot and spicy flavoring. I’m not talking subtle spices either. I mean the sort of hot that is going to over power everything else on your plate. Why bother having anything else … might as well just drink a glass of the sauce or eat a few peppers and save yourself some money. Not everything has to be smothered in jalapenos or some other chili pepper … and stop it with the chipotle this and chipotle that. Bobby Flay has already done it to death. Move on.

Yes, lots of griping about food things today. I’ve spent too much time watching Food Network, eating out, and and not enough time cooking in my own kitchen. It makes me grumpy. Though I must admit that tonight, I think I may have finally perfected my roasted sausage and potato recipe. Lin almost never comments on how good something I cooked is. I usually just judge how well he likes it by how quickly he eats it. Tonight, he complimented me extensively on dinner. I must have gotten it right at last. Of course … I thought it turned out too spicy and peppery, meaning I didn’t like it so much. It figures, doesn’t it?

Oh, and at long last I may have heard the last from Lin about how the best pizza in the world is Chicago-style deep dish pizza made in Chicago, because Yankees know how to make pizza. We watched a show tonight on the history of pizza, and lo and behold … the reason Chicago has great deep dish pizza is … wait for it … wait for it … it was invented by a transplanted TEXAN! So … I guess Texans do know a thing or two about pizza. This is now one of those trivial facts I have branded on my brain to bring up whenever necessary.

For the record, I can’t stand deep dish pizza. I prefer classic Italian-style pizza … another thing I have had difficulty finding around here at something that resembles a reasonable price.

OK, enough griping for one night. I need to get some sleep. I’ve been up for almost 24 hours again, and barely got any sleep last night. My grumpiness level goes far beyond griping about food. I’m just grumpy in general, and therefore, not sleeping well. I am hormonal beyond all belief and “late”. No, not pregnant late (at least I don’t think so), more like I lost so much weight this last month, my body thinks I am a preteen girl again. This is seriously sucking.

Yup, better get to bed. Maybe I won’t be quite so grumpy tomorrow. No guarantees.

Lin said, “Why don’t we go do something fun together? We never do anything fun together.”

“Great idea,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

We were once again faced with the fact that our ideas of fun are almost exact polar opposites.

My ideas were to go to the Blanton Museum for the free tour tonight on Baroque Period art, or to a lecture on pre-alphabetic writing systems (which I would LOVE to go to). He didn’t seem amused by my choices, so I suggested we go to the Jourden-Bachman Pioneer Farm this weekend for their Independence Day Festival … who can resist hayrides, crafts, food cooked outdoors and all manner of 1800’s fun? Lin can.

Of course, his suggestions were far outside my realm of things considered fun. Mostly they involve getting dressed up, going to some sort of nightclub, and drinking alcoholic beverages while listening to music at high volume.

Sigh.

How did two totally opposite people manage to hook up and stay together so long?!

The feeling of being watched makes people act more honestly, even if the eyes are not real, a study suggests.

Big Brother, here we come!

“It does raise the possibility that you could get people to behave more co-operatively or pro-socially by putting up pictures of eyes,” said Dr Bateson.

Oh, I can’t wait. I really can’t wait.

I watch Food Network a lot. I love cooking shows and shows about food … cooking being one of those things I am really into. There’s something that has been bothering me lately: food terminology.

A few nights ago a watched a Food Network special called the Las Vegas Pasty Competition. The only problem was there were no pastries to be found. The competition featured top pastry chefs building sugar sculptures. While it was a fascinating program, and I love seeing the amazing things people with skill and talent can do with just sugar, a sugar sculpture isn’t a pastry. One need only look in any standard English dictionary to find that in order for something to be classified as a pastry four things can be considered requirements: flour, shortening, water and baking. Food Network calling a sugar sculpture competition a “pastry” competition irked me enough that I may have to email them to complain.

My other current pet peeve is the use of the word “microgreens” to describe sprouts. Sprouts is a perfectly good word to describe, well SPROUTS and shoots (i.e. baby plants). Why come up with a new word to describe something that has a perfectly valid and well-known word to describe it already, especially since I wouldn’t consider sprouts to be particularly “micro” in nature, not to mention not all sprouts are green (just to nitpick further).

I realize that languages grow and change over time, and call me a fuddy-duddy if you want to, but why not use the language correctly as it already exists rather than misusing it or creating all new words when the ones we have work just fine?

The house feels all wrong. My daily schedule is destroyed. My furry best friend is gone, and it is effecting every aspect of my life. I can barely stand to be in the kitchen where we spent so many hours together. In fact, I can barely stand to be in the house. Every nook, cranny, corner, piece of furniture, reminds me of him. Not to diminish Lin’s friendship with Fuzza, because they had a wonderful and loving relationship, but I was home every day all day with the cat … there was grooming, feeding, playing, cleaning up after him, having him “help” me with my crafts or household chores, and even when we weren’t actively engaged in an doing something together, I would always stoop down to pet him when I passed by, hear him padding around the house or getting into something (known as “unauthorized cat activities”, and whenever I called him, he came running. Fuzza was intrinsically interwoven with the very fabric of my life.

I decided to take out the litter box and his bowls today. Seeing them only made me cry, but now not seeing them is making me just as upset. Those places now seem too empty and vacant. Maybe I should have waited another day or two, but when I caught myself topping off his water bowl from my giant mug of ice water (he loved ice cold water to drink), I thought it best to remove them. I haven’t picked up his toys yet. They can stay for a while. When I see them or trip over them, they make me laugh and remember good times (and then they make me cry). I just don’t have the heart to clear all his things out just yet. I guess I’m getting my first taste of what it’s like to have someone you live with die and having to deal with what to do about their belongings. I don’t know what to do with them. It seems wrong to leave them lying around, and it seems silly to put them in boxes and keep them forever, but getting rid of them doesn’t feel right either. Even in death, Fuzza is teaching me things I suppose.

I’m actually not doing too badly with all this. Prone to sobbing at any moment and depressed, of course, but I’m remembering so many happy times and all the love we shared. When I cling to those memories, the pain of loss isn’t so bad. I think once we get Fuzza’s ashes back, it will be better, or maybe not. I’ve never had the opportunity to experience having a dead loved one’s ashes sitting around in a pretty little urn before. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes. Right now, I am looking forward to bringing his remains home. Once they are here, I may feel differently.

I started a post about yesterday, but it will be a while before I am ready to finish it or post it. Because I’d been talking with several of my on line friends about all this, and I can’t bring myself to write any emails right now, here’s all I have to say about it for the moment:

Lin and I both know we made the right decision to take him in yesterday. Fuzza knew it too. Lin and I both went as far through the event with him as we each could. Lin stayed through the beginning of the sedation, and while I hadn’t planned to stay with him until the very end, when the time came to leave, I found I couldn’t leave … and I am glad beyond words that I did. Those last few moments together were so important.

Fuzza isn’t really gone. Sure he isn’t running around the house or laying on my lap, but I feel him all around me all the time. Once I get used to missing his physical presence, I think I am going to be just fine. I have even informed the universe that I might be ready for my next rescue kitty to find its way to me (every cat I have ever had has found me, and not the other way around) … and the universe has never let me down before, so I know there’s another bundle of furry joy waiting to enter my life sometime in the future when the time is right. Who knows, it might not even be a cat at all. Maybe the next time Dinner the Rabbit hops into my yard looking for a handout, I’ll invite him in and see what happens.

I just wanted to make a post so no one would worry about me. I learned a lot about losing a loved one and the intense grief that follows when my dad died, and I am putting those lessons to good use … and with Fuzza guiding me, I am learning a little more about how to say goodbye and focus on the good while letting the bad wash away with the tears.