Here is the 24th installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not to Do by Marie Ann Bailey of 1WriteWay at http://1writeway.com and John W. Howell of Fiction Favorites at http://johnwhowell.com. These lists are simu-published on our blogs each Monday. We hope you enjoy.
10. When traveling with a cat by car, do not assume that your cat will not get car sick. Take it for a short spin first. Usually five minutes is long enough to determine if you will need to pull over to the side of the road and empty the pet carrier of the results of a double end evacuation response while keeping kitty contained in the car.
We were on our way back home after a two-day business meeting in another state. We still had about 200 miles to go when we decided to stop at a Wendy’s off I-75 and break for dinner. I was tired and hungry and sat facing away from the windows when one of my coworkers pointed past my shoulder and said “Look!” I turned and my heart sank. A thin cat was slinking along the ledge of a window, rubbing against the concrete dividers, and begging for food. I sighed and looked away, telling myself that she was likely a stray, probably feral, and I should ignore her because I was 200 miles from home and I already have three cats.
And I keep telling my husband that we cannot have any more cats. Even in the best possible environment, they grow old, they get sick, they die. We’ve had to put down four cats in the 20+ years we’ve lived here. Luisa is almost twenty years old, and I dread the day when she’ll start to fail and we’ll have to make “the decision” yet again. Junior and Maxine are not so old, but I can’t imagine life without them.
So I turned away, but this cat continued to walk along all three windowed sides of the fast food place, catching my attention. Finally, I bought a hamburger and my coworker gave me a tray to put it on. I went outside and couldn’t find her. I circled the place twice and was ready to give up. The three of us consulted and I put the tray of cooked meat down around some bushes. We moved toward our van when a car started and the thin, now obviously young, cat came shooting out from under it. She followed me to the tray, rubbing against my legs as we went.
I was able to pick her up. She let me pet her. She wasn’t feral, not at all. She was a young cat, perhaps younger than one year old, and all I could think was that she was lost. I don’t remember what I said next, but whatever it was, it prompted my coworkers to suddenly start brainstorming about how we could get her to my home.
One coworker brought the van around to where the cat was eating; the other went into Wendy’s and got a bunch of paper napkins to line the recycle bin that we had used to transport documents. There was a department store in the next lot, so we drove there and they insisted on looking for a pet taxi. Aside from our luggage, we didn’t have a closed container to put her in, and it was too dangerous to let her roam loose in the van.
While my coworkers were in the store, I called my husband, just to warn him. I’m bringing home a cat. My coworkers are enablers. They want me to call her Wendy.
They came back with a pan of cat litter, a large fleece blanket, a bag of kitty treats, a bottle of water, and a double-bowl dish. As soon as the van started again, she made for the floor. I tried to get her to settle in the recycle bin but she would have none of it. Finally, I loosely wrapped the blanket around her and pulled her to my lap. She laid there, purring, sleeping and stretching for three-and-a-half hours.
So we have a new cat. Her name is Wendy (although my husband likes to call her Wendyz). She had been spayed (yea!) but she had not been chipped. Well, she wasn’t then, but she is now. To her original caretakers: I am sorry you lost your cat. I don’t know of any way to find you since she was found at a fast-food restaurant off a major interstate and she didn’t have a chip. Your loss is our gain. She is beautiful and she is sweet and she is safe and we will do everything to give her a long, happy life.
I know The Association’s song is “Windy” but it still kept popping into my head on that long drive home.
Here is the second installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not To Do by Marie Ann Bailey of 1WriteWay at http://1writeway.com and John W. Howell of Fiction Favorites at http://johnwhowell.com. These lists are simu-published on our blogs each Monday. We hope you enjoy.
10. Do not bring your cat. For one, the interviewer may be allergic to cats. For another, the cat may take that opportunity to gift a massive hairball on the interviewer’s desk.
9. Do not go on a bender the night before. The interviewer may not take kindly to you smelling like a vat of fermenting wine or worse adding a hairball of your own making to the desk.
8. Do not choose this as an opportunity to express your inner punk by sporting a blue Mohawk hair style. With your luck, the interviewer will likely be a former Marine who will want to shave off that blue hair personally with a dull jungle knife.
7. Do not show up wearing your gardening clothes. This may confuse the interviewer as to whether you’re there for the interview or you’re just one of the landscape crew.
6. Do not offer as one of your weaknesses that you are a procrastinator, even if it is true. In response, the interviewer may procrastinate about whether to tell you that you don’t have the job.
5. Do not take the opportunity to go through the interviewer’s desk if you are left alone during the interview. Chances are the interviewer will be back before you know it and accuse you of stealing the change kept hidden in the bottom drawer.
4. Do not tweet during the interview. While you may think tweeting is evidence that you are “hip” to social media, the interviewer may tweet later that you are a social idiot.
3. Do not complain about your ex-spouse or ex-lover or ex-anything during the interview. Such disclosures will only make the interviewer wonder what you will be like as an ex-employee.
2. Do not come to the interview and say “I’ve applied for so many jobs. Which one is this?” Chances are the interviewer will counter with “I’ve had so many job applicants. Who the hell are you?”
1. Do not hug the interviewer at any time before, during or after the interview. At best, the interviewer will simply turn red-faced and throw your resume into the “Do Not Call Back” pile. At worst, the interviewer will sue you for sexual harassment.
I have to pinch myself. Sometimes I feel like I’m dreaming. I am a shy, sensitive introvert: someone who doesn’t make friends easily, someone who feels more comfortable with furry four-legged critters than people. I’m often inclined to think that people have more reason to not like me, than to like me. That’s just part of who I am. But since I’ve been blogging, I’ve been showered with awards from people I have never met. All I’ve done is commented on and liked your posts, followed your blogs, and tried to give support for your writing and other ventures when I can. And in return I get these awards.
Super-Sweet Award
Earlier this week, RunningToHerDreams honored me with the Super Sweet Blogger Award, my second one! And she is herself a super sweet and inspiring person, so please visit her blog.
Then Briana Vedsted created a new award and I’m among the first to be honored!
Now for the Rules:
Post a picture of the award somewhere on your blog.
List five things that make you happy.
Choose 5 people to nominate who have been a virtual shoulder to cry on, checked in on you when they knew things were rough, or has always been there for you.
Comment on their blogs to thank them and let them know you nominated you.
Things that make me happy:
1. My husband (OK, he’s not a thing but he’s the first and last and in-between in my happiness)
2. When any of my cats curl up on my lap
3. Giving hand-knitted gifts to friends
3. Writing
4. Reading
5. This community of bloggers
Briana already gave the award to two of my favorite bloggers, so here a few more of my favorites.
These lines–Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind–should be familiar to any college student who had to read early American literature. These are lines that, when I first read them, I didn’t quite understand them. It was the late 1980s and while my husband and I were starting to tread carefully into personal computer ownership, we were still technologically young enough to be giddy over our remote controlled TV and new CD player. As the years passed and we accumulated more gadgets and at a faster rate than we could have anticipated, those lines of Emerson‘s spring to my mind more and more frequently.
In a society where consumerism is nearly a religion and oftentimes used to show “patriotism,” it’s difficult not to fall into a depression of sorts when the It of “is this it?” is not enough. You buy gadgets that reportedly will enhance your life, and six months later they are obsolete. So you purchase anew to feel purpose in life and the cycle continues. It’s not only a sad way to live, it’s unsustainable. Unless you’re incredibly wealthy, at some point you run of money to buy the things that you think will give your life meaning. Hence, the lottery. A quick fix. A desire to be wealthy without having to work for it (unless you consider standing in line work). When I’m in one of my Peggy Lee moods and start humming Is That All There Is?, I:
go for a walk without my iPod so I’m not distracted from the song and flight of birds, the squirrels chasing each other up and down trees, the hum of insects;
pick up a hardcover book and feel it’s weight in my hands and the dryness of paper as I flip through the pages;
hug my husband;
pet my cats;
call a friend;
write
Granted, some of these things cost money: shoes for walking, books for reading, food for husband and cats, phone for calls, pen and paper for writing. But none of them requires a gadget, a technological device that has been partly designed to make me feel lost without it (even the phone mentioned is one that we’ve had for about 20 years). We are existential beings struggling to make sense of a world that often makes little sense. We are sold things with the promise that we can derive meaning for our lives through these things. But do we? How many of us, every so often, decide to go “off the grid” in a quest to find true meaning, sustainable meaning, meaning that will outlast every technological advance we embrace?
Recently, our DSL had an interruption in services for at least a day. I admit, when I realized that I could not connect to the Internet, that I could not check my blog or my favorite blogs, I panicked. I didn’t know why I couldn’t connect and the thought of being disconnected for unknown hours was chilling. It was early morning, before I had to leave for work and I was in a panic that I could not “log on” and get my blog fix before setting off for my day job. But, my husband was still there. In fact, he was oblivious to my panic because he was on the porch reading a book, his morning routine before setting out for work. My cats were still there and actually annoyed that I was in more of a tizzy over the loss of my Internet access than I ever am when it’s their feeding time. My books hadn’t disappeared, and I still had drawers of pens, pencils and paper to write on. I didn’t check my phone because I actually hate phones.
It was a wake-up call for me. Should I be so dependent on technology that I stop breathing when I open Firefox and get the message: “Error. Server unavailable”? Should I allow these things to ride me? Or should I embrace the sudden silence, the sense of time slowing, the drawn-out minutes when I can pick up an unread issue of the New York Review of Books or Harper’s or The New Yorker and feel reconnected to that time, 30-some years ago, when I read these periodicals as soon as they arrived in the mail?
I don’t want to go totally off-the-grid. I wouldn’t have a blog if I did, but I don’t like feeling controlled by technology, made to feel that every second I don’t own an iPhone is a second lost to me. [Disclaimer: I do own and love my iPad2, but note it is an iPad2, not the newest iPad and, like all my other gadgets, I’ll likely still be using it long past its obsolescence.] So, fellow bloggers, and any one else who stumbles across this post, are you in the saddle, or are things?
Recently I moved from a small cubicle to a corner office with enough wall space for a mini-art gallery. Since I’m prohibited from painting the walls anything other than the dullest off-white, I found a supplier of removable vinyl wall decals (www.popdecors.com) and proceeded to decorate.You may note that cats are a big theme for me. I didn’t stop with decals though.
We bought this poster when we were in New Orleans last year; it reminds us of our cat Luisa. You can see the resemblance, can’t you?
Yea, I’ve made it past 40 thousand words (41,227, to be exact)! Now I can barely keep my eyes open and my throat is sore from begging my cats to just let me write a little bit more and then I will feed you! OK, maybe I wasn’t begging so much as yelling at them to leave me alone for just a few more minutes!
But I’m done for the night, and I hope this post makes sense because my brain is really fried. I admit, it will be so good to get this month behind me, and to take a break. I have to remind myself that most writers, published and otherwise, don’t try to write a novel in one month. I think it’s safe to say that most of them take more time than that :) But I know that at this point in my writing life, unless I have a deadline hanging over my head, it’s much too easy to put it off or to talk myself out of writing because, you know, that story idea really sucks anyway. I am my own worst critic, and the beauty of NaNoWriMo is that it does force me to write without thinking too hard.
I am thinking of posting my writing eventually, not just the novels I’ve been working on, but also my short stories. I actually consider myself to be more of a short story writer. Novel writing intimidates me. Perhaps that can be my break from NaNoWriMo, setting up pages within my blog for writing. We’ll see.
Anyway, a big thanks to all my followers and fellow bloggers who are participating in Camp NaNoWriMo (or not) and who continue to inspire and encourage me.
What’s this? Another award for moi? I was dumbstruck to receive two awards in as many days. I have to give a BIG thanks to Lissa at http://thelissachronicles.wordpress.com/. She kindly nominated me for this award, and I am truly honored. I love Lissa’s blog and I love that she’s a Supernatural fan :) Without further ado, let me proceed with the rules for this award:
Include the award’s logo in a post or on your Blog.
Link to the person who nominated you.
Answer 10 questions about yourself.
Nominate 10 Bloggers.
Link your nominees to the post and comment on their Blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.
Since I am new to this award, I’ll answer some of the same questions that Lissa did.
Favorite color: Pink; but I wear a lot of black and gray and white … go figure.
Favorite animal: Cat (domestic)
Favorite number: 3; I have 3 cats and that seems like an ideal number since I’ve cared for as few as one and as many as six at one time.
Favorite non-alcoholic drink: Earl Grey tea with a touch of milk and a packet of Equal; it’s what gets me going in the morning.
Favorite alcoholic drink: dirty gin martini; I had my first one ever two years ago in New Orleans and loved it, and so far, New Orleans is the only place where I’ve had dirty gin martinis
Prefer Facebook or Twitter: Twitter these days; I have a Facebook account but it’s not as much as fun as it used to be.
My passion(s): My husband, my cats, my writing, my friends, my knitting
Prefer getting or giving presents: I prefer giving. I have everything I ever could need or want.
Favorite city: San Francisco; I only lived there 3 1/2 years, but it feels like home for me whenever I go back.
Favorite TV show: Supernatural; the boys just get better as they get older :)
Marie at 1 Write Way 