it is good to have a cat

holding a cat in your arms is one of the best experiences you can have. they are soft, they purr onto your chest, you can put your face into their fur or against their head, and you can pet them while you talk to them. sometimes cats don't like to be picked up but if you can find one who does, you can bet you will have a good time. you may find a cat who likes being picked up sometimes but not other times. it can be very hard to gauge whether a cat wants to be picked up until you do it, so if you pick one up be prepared to read the warning signs. if the cat squirms, claws you, cries out, or hisses you should let the cat down gently onto the ground and back away. under no circumstances should you put your face within biting distance of the cat or try to force the cat to like what you are doing by holding onto them tighter. backing away is also important because the cat may try to claw your ankles in retaliation. cats are very good at telling you when they don't like what you are doing. other cats may not have liked being held when they were young, but now that they are old and weak they enjoy it very much. if you find a good cat for holding, pick them up under their front legs and scoop them toward your chest. remember to use one hand to cradle their hind legs as no one likes to dangle. you can prop their front paws on your shoulder or upper arm and use that same arm as a ledge for their feet. then your other hand is free to hug, pat and stroke the cat while your face nuzzles them. your cat may begin to get bored while you do this, so jiggling the cat like they are a human baby or bringing them toward fascinating objects such as windows, birds, or sometimes other humans can prolong the time you have with your cat before they begin to squirm. if you want to get a bit creative, try holding your cat as though they are a human baby, on their back. with this method, you will often have to cradle them with both arms. this method gives you a nice view of your cat's belly and allows you to look into each other's eyes but does not allow for too much cuddling and petting. gently rocking your cat while cradling them in this position can allow your cat to become a surrogate for a human baby. some humans and cats like this form of roleplay very much. whatever you find your resulting relationship to your cat to be, you can see here that the benefits to holding a cat in your arms far outweigh the costs. i want to encourage you to go out and hold a cat right now. i have done it, and my day has been made better as a result.

of note: 8/25/2012

1. watched tiny furniture, had only seen the last ~30 min before, why is lena dunham's life so eerily relatable, why does every girl (between ages 22-28 maybe) feel this way, seems like we're all fucked
2. why is jemima kirke so cool, how does lena dunham know everything, why is david call so dreamy, guess what i am a tiny baby 12 year old writing in my diary
3. in my room there is a full, floor-to-ceiling bookshelf with three stacks of books piled in front of it, 8 moving boxes full of books, and 3 other small stacks of loose books, also the only bookshelf i brought back from my apartment is now almost full and is in the next room, also i already gave jackson a bunch of my books that he brought home with him, i can't have any more books someone needs to physically stop me from books like separate me from my books although it might be nice to die from being beaten to death by a bookshelf like that person in howard's end
4. just noticed my dad's bongos are on the very top of my bookshelf, some other good finds include an early edition of little bear, a copy of oliphaunt, and a drum stick from some band i listened to in high school that i was probably really excited about catching
5. who hurls drum sticks into crowds of teens i mean what even
6. i yelled at a baby in a restaurant tonight for being a baby, that would probably make a good tweet
7. my hair is a complete mess, life's bleak

of note: 8/23/2012

1. someone told me today that they felt 'super awake', seems like i have never been/never will be super awake. contemplating taking a nap, it is 8 pm
2. had a dream last night that jackson and i survived an emergency water landing in a plane, it was like super easy to do, but then they took us to this convention center or something with all these other plane crash survivors and the 5th grade bully was there, but like grown up. she was still bullying people. i gave her a bloody nose and jackson told me that was uncalled for
3. when i went to the gym, a girl who looked a lot like the grown up version of the 5th grade bully got on a stationary bike diagonally in front of the machine i was using and stared at me for my whole workout, kept playing out some like sitcom scene in my mind where she approaches me after i finish and tells me she's sorry for everything and how like in the sitcom we would have made up and become buddies but felt there was a significant chance i'd just punch her irl, like, felt a lot of internal aggression toward this person who may or may not have been the 5th grade bully. avoided eye contact with her when 'wiping down' the machine and walking away, guess i won't actually punch the bully
4. looked at a lot of articles on just jared and tmz, just like kept clicking from one to the next, felt like i really did want to know how big big sean is, what ke$ha looks like in a high-waisted bikini, and where prince harry had been playing strip poker
5. went to the dentist today, he's my next door neighbor and he always asks about my writing, i always forget how interested he is, seems super nice. he said (re: my thesis) 'it's not about a dentist who lives next door to you and is also a serial killer, is it?' i said no, that's my next one and he laughed a lot and called me 'sneaky'. real cute, but also maybe like 5% scary.

of note: 8/22/2012

1. went to an organized writing marathon today, not really i guess, was just a few friends who wanted to get writing done and decided to do it together and then drink wine after
2. two of the people i was with told me jackson and i weren't cute any more, we're just a normal couple to them now, we have reached our quota for novelty/cuteness hehe
3. 'the ravenous audience' by kate durbin came in the mail, real scary/cool cover, kind of scared to leave it by my bedside due to women on the cover with long black hair contorting their bodies in nightgowns 'the ring-style'
4. watched american psycho with jackson for date night, his dad is reading my copy of the book right now and said in there patrick bateman gets manicures, jackson just held up his fingers and said 'dun dun dun' and then joked about his mum making room for me in the closet (jakey, halp! eee)
5. have been forgetting to tweet lately, need to 'get on my grind'
6. some things i have read lately: best alt lit short stories, '(whatever shit is raw)' by ana c, 'thank u for touching me' by marie calloway, 'having a coke zero with you' by lk shaw, 'having a coke with you' by frank o'hara, 'how to date a browngirl, blackgirl, whitegirl, or halfie' by junot diaz
7. there's a big ol pimple on the inside of my nostril, folks

of note: 8/19/2012

1. am currently lying on my back in bed with my laptop on my tummy, it is almost 4 am, i feel very sleepy
2. am wearing an old jersey/'singlet' of jackson's he gave me when i visited him in december-january. remember when he wore it in a series of semi-nude photos he sent me before we met irl, sometime last year.
3. have been/am on skype with jackson for the past 7 hours. things we have accomplished while on skype: made 'mugshot' versions of ourselves via bbcamerica.com/cooper, discussed visual details of forthcoming collaborative ebook, jackson ate lunch and dinner, i ate a snack, read aloud and laughed at old rejected submissions to UP circa january 2012 (this is very mean, i do not recommend repeating it), talked about sex, showed jackson my boobs, played text twist, watched 'lil bitch' and 'lil bitch 2', read and discussed 'poem in which words have been left out' by charles jensen, talked about christian bok, looked at each other's poems
4. ate 'taro' flavored frozen yogurt today, it was light purple and v. cute, tasted yum like starchy coconut, found out later it is a root samoans eat that makes them 'big and strong' (read: obese), calories/fat/carbs in the frozen yogurt i ate were very low, feel confused by this
5. think my back is finally better, have been experiencing stabbing/radiating pains in my lower back since mid-july, friends asked me tonight how it was doing before we did a walk and i can honestly say it didn't give me any trouble, feel 85-90% okay as opposed to feeling only 50-60% okay earlier this month, never went to a doctor/chiropractor though i thought about it a lot lol, think daily yoga stretches and regular exercise have helped me get to where i am now without needing a professional opinion :)
6. did a series of self-portraits for tumblr where i put my face on a total of 9 men's faces circa 1864

of note: 8/18/2012

1. woke up at a normal time but didn't get out of bed until 3 pm because i felt hungry
2. didn't do much of note today, spent most of the day watching house hunters international with my dad, reading grow up outside on the deck, and going to dinner at an 'asian' restaurant called jasmine that is located in a strip mall.
3. when we did the part of the meal where we put everything in to go boxes, dad put his in upside down and then tried to 'flip it' when it was dripping all over the plastic bag, ended up shooting sauce from his mixed vege entree all over his own shorts.
4. my fortune said 'your home will be visited by good health and wealth', mom's fortune said 'a banker is someone who lends you an umbrella on a clear day'.
5. door to the bathroom was open with no lights on, walked past and saw my dad doing a sitting down pee
6. jackson and i are both sick. we have been on skype for 6 hrs 10 min and 59 seconds.

super big retrospective!! of note: 8/15 - 8/17

1. have been spending a lot of time feeling alternately overwhelmed and ecstatic about the creative writing class i'm teaching in the fall, have been manically adding/deleting readings from the syllabus

2. right now, internet writing from blake butler, socrates adams-florou, xTx, frank hinton, shane jones, mel bosworth, ana c. and richard chiem, sasha fletcher and daniel bailey, chad redden, russ woods and steve roggenbuck is included alongside 'classic ass bros' like ernest hemingway, lorrie moore, nabokov, updike, david foster wallace, joe brainard, allen ginsberg. seems good.

3. i have read and reread a whole lot of really good things by these and more writers and maybe will spend time making a list of what i most enjoyed but right now i am feeling too hungry to do that

4. basically all of 8/15 was spent doing things to 'craft' my syllabus, 8/16 was a mix of doing syllabus and doing things irl like going to the gym, and 8/17 i spent in washington, dc alternating between panic and euphoria

5. on 8/17 i got up at 8:00 am, drove to washington, dc and arrived at the state department at 10:45 am to get documents authorized. this is a really scary place. it is like a more cramped version of the dmv and a more insane version of the afterlife reception waiting room in beetlejuice. many people seem to know each other here and come here a lot. this seems very bad and scary. the room is v. long and narrow with chairs in rows of three against one side wall and a place to form a line against the other. the door is the back wall and a row of plexiglass windows with women behind them is the front wall. once you have your forms filled out, you stand in line until a plexiglass woman calls you up and takes your forms and gives you a number. then you sit down between two strangers and wait. they stop giving numbers at 11:00 am but continue to authorize forms until each number has been addressed. i read 'grow up' while waiting for ~1.5 hours for my documents to be authorized. while i was waiting, the nice/trim ethiopian man next to me was replaced by a larger smelly man who slept on my arm and apologized for  jabbing his elbow into my upper arm whenever he woke. while i was waiting, a man experiencing substance-induced psychosis with symptoms resembling paranoid schizophrenia attempted to pay for his authorized documents by digging through his pockets to produce ~25 crumpled $1 bills. while digging, he was also attempting (unsuccessfully) to balance and hold 1 big gulp cup, 1 subway soft drink, 2 wrappers from subway, a fedex envelope, and his returned documents via a series of 'juggling moves'. he became increasingly frustrated by these unsuccessful attempts and began to throw his personal belongings onto the ground/at the walls. his 'acquaintances' called out to him repeatedly and told him to stop this behavior, as he was in the state department and 'smelled like alcohol'. one of them approached him and tried to calm him down by collecting/counting the money and giving it to a plexiglass woman while the high person paced up and down the length of the room. this would have worked i think if the man hadn't banged into the trash can, upsetting his balance and causing him to grab his money from the acquaintance, shout 'i don't trust you' and return to throwing things. during this experience, the plexiglass women stopped calling out numbers. a middle aged middle eastern man in a suit who had been ahead of me in line when i arrived took photographs and video footage of these events while the high person's acquaintances questioned the legality of the middle eastern man's activities. eventually we had to evacuate the room after the plexiglass women called the police. then they brought him outside, brought us back in, and locked him outside. after the police arrived, the plexiglass women returned to authorizing documents and calling out numbers.

6. after going to the state department, i had to mail the documents, and then i had ~5 free hours until my friend's party in columbia heights. i spent this time driving to my 'regular' nail salon in georgetown, which was closed for the week, driving to an alternate nail salon and getting a shitty manicure, eating sushi at dean and deluca, driving to dupont and having coffee/working/skyping jackson at soho coffee & tea, buying alcohol, and then driving to columbia heights

7. at the party, i met a cat named carmine, had a lot of really good food prepared by my friends, drank the maximum amount of alcohol i could to still be able to safely drive home to maryland, and talked to my friends from my program about both grad school-related things and personal things (basically 'catching up' from a summer apart). it felt very good and relaxing to be around these people again, wish we had done things throughout the summer but then maybe we would have less to talk about now, idk. feel good about going 'back to school' and seeing them a lot more in the near future.

8. in the next week, i will participate in a dentist appointment, an optometrist appointment, a possible hair appointment, an organized writing marathon incl. other humans, multiple unorganized writing marathons by myself, a date night with jackson, a possible shopping experience and a possible second night in a row of socializing (tonight 8/18)

of note: 8/14/2012

1. i accidentally deleted my draft from 8/13 so i am ignoring that day, that day didn't exist
2. went to ukazoo (bookstore) to look for anthologies to teach with, felt nervous/anxious walking in and remember thinking 'i am getting awkward again, i was so much better last year, living at home makes me scared of everyone'. had to ask a cute black guy with glasses where the anthology section was, he was really nice. felt really calm and like 'in' my body while doing a kneel on the floor to read all the titles in the anthology section. picked up 'the norton anthology of short fiction: shorter third edition' for $3.99 and 'mondo barbie' for $4.49. saw 'there is no year' and 'bed' in the fiction section. looked for more used books because of buy 3 get 1 free deal but all the other books i wanted were new, left with just the two. felt good to know megan boyle worked there and liked working there.
3. read a 'digital galley' copy of buttercup's novella 'treees' (as stephen michael mcdowell) while on skype with jackson while he was reading it too. did a blurb together.
4. conversation with jackson: 'we're cool baby' 'we most certainly are' 'do cool people say that they're cool?' 'only the coolest ones' 'cool'
5. there is a lightning storm happening outside. jackson and i are about to watch 'funny ha ha' on skype. it is 'date night'.

of note: 8/12/2012

1. last day in annapolis was a perfect pool day incl. lunch, lounging, and swimming laps during adult swim. found some ppls hairs in my swimsuit when i showered after but hey, nothing says swimming pool like other people's filth

2. spent probably a total of an hour checking my freckles for signs of melanoma

3. finished reading 'the outsiders' today and did a cry, probably only about 20% as hard as when i read it as a preteen but still, i impressed myself. MAYBE I STAYED GOLD!

4. really freaked out about the olympic closing ceremony, good job britain thanks for producing some good music through the ages and giving birth to john lennon, david bowie, annie lennox, freddie mercury, eric idle and the spice girls

5. 'liked' this reblog on tumblr: 'i wanna live in an cozy apartment where it rains a lot and it snows and i live near a coffee shop and read books all the time and fall in love with someone' via hercoralcloset, post has 71,114 notes

BONUS, did this tweet:

of note: 8/11/2012

1. funny how what you read as a kid sticks the hardest in your mind, even stuff you don't realize til you're rereading 'the outsiders' and finding material you lifted and dumped directly into the manuscript you're working on now, fifteen years after you first read the book
2. i wonder if we're all writing from the kids inside of us, or if maybe just the dumb or lucky ones of us are doing that
3. jackson's mom got him a black turtleneck and it makes him look like either a mime or someone trying to look french. he's threatening to buy a beret and 'other french looking clothes'
4. had a dream last night that my parents saw me cybering jackson by peering into my room via a glass panel above the door like the one i had in my bedroom in my old apartment in washington, dc. [editor's note: did it anyway today]
5. had another dream last night in which jackson had a vagina