Spider-rific!

As much as I've tried to find my inner Buddhist when it comes to the invading army of spiders flanked on my outside windows, I must admit to a giddy sense of satisfaction when I saw the notice posted in the building elevator: WINDOW CLEANING THIS WEEK. It seemed that my live-and-let-creepy-crawly-spiders-live attitude was paying me back in kindness. The window cleaners would slowly descend from the roof, one foot at a time, and they would kick through the webs without ever laying eyes on the detailed and delicate work of the Mosler Loft Arachnids. Spiders killed without a moment of murderous intent. (I'm pretty sure that feeling relief at the accidental destruction of another living being is totally against the good Buddha, but I don't claim to be a Buddhist, I'm just trying to minimize my good Catholic guilt.) I pulled my blinds and listened to the squeak-squeak-thumping of the window cleaners lowering down my building, swinging their ropes from side to side, covering as much width as possible to minimize the number of descents they'd have to make to hit all of that glass--there's a lot of glass on the 12 levels of this building. Squeak-squeak-thump, I imagined all of those webs being wiped away, no longer sitting between me and my view. Sorry, Spidey, but I didn't order them cleaners to come wash you away, I'm just minding my own business and wishing you well in whatever place you go to from here. Good luck, and yes, good riddance.

Turns out, spiders are resilient. And they work very quickly. By the time the sun was setting, two new webs were covering one of the recently squeegeed windows. Son of a...

Alas, it's only the outside of the windows that get cleaned by the brave men on ropes, I'm responsible for cleaning the interiors, which means we're looking out at this fabulous view through dusty, finger-smeared glass. Plus a new batch of spider webs.

Kittens are gross. And AWESOME!

This morning I was awoken by a kitty licking my armpit. It's a strange wake-up, let me tell you. I was completely under the blanket, most likely in order to protect my hair (more on that later), so I couldn't see what was happening, and it took a few seconds for me to respond by pulling back the blankets and seeing a little kitten face inches from my nose, getting really cozy with my armpit. Gross.

Smokey and The Bandit (yes, we have settled on those names, though we had many good options offered up which we might have gone with had we not already spent a few days calling these guys Smokey and The Bandit, which feels quite right, especially when I use their nicknames: Smokestack and El Bandito), the two of them are perfectly at home here on the 10th floor. They are an absolute joy, even though they are kinda disgusting. Their favorite toy seems to be the litter box, in which they like to wrestle, which makes it really great that we have an extra bathtub in which it can live, because otherwise there would be litter EVERYWHERE in this place. I think they spend about a third of their waking lives in that litter box, either wrestling one another or pooping out half their body weight (seriously, how do such small beasties produce so much poop?) When they are not in the litter box, they are chasing each other throughout the apartment, wrestling on floors and couches and beds. Their next favorite toy is the collapsible hamper, which would provide hours of fun were it not for the fact that they keep collapsing it on one another. Still, every time I open it up, it's like Christmas for kittens. Very funny, and not the least bit disgusting.

And their next favorite toy, well, it's my hair. Oh, how they love to comb my hair with their little kitty claws! Generally I am woken in the morning not with an armpit licking but with a hair tangling. It's like a million tiny strings, and they get so excited they want to play with them all. Which means my hair, when I eventually make my way to a bathroom and confront myself in the mirror, resembles something a modern artist might title "Chaos Theory". I try to tie it back in an elastic, but that just gives the kittens something deeper to dig into. And in my sleep, it seems, I try to escape their clawing by tucking the blankets under my head, which this morning led to a kitten burrowing beneath the blanket and discovering the tastiness of my armpit. Gross. But then, how adorable are they? Just look:

I can forgive their being so darned gross because they're just so darned adorable. Sigh. Totally smitten with the kittens.

Lemons=Lemonade

I hate spiders. No, I'll not say HATE. I strongly dislike spiders. Spiders of any size, they creep me out. Insects in general have that effect, but the spider creep-factor is the highest. Ever since I was a little kid, playing in our Ohio basement with my stuffed animals and Kajagoogoo on the radio, when a tickle on the back of my neck turned out to be the pitter patter of little Daddy Long Legs feet, ever since then I've had a response of cold fear and minor nausea whenever I see a spider. So imagine how I have felt throughout the warmish-weather months when the fantastic view from my floor-to-ceiling windows has been partially obstructed by spider webs. I kid you not, we've had a veritable infestation of spiders living on the outside of our windows (I've only seen one web indoors, and it had the look of being long abandoned, all sagging and broken and dusty). We live on the 10th floor, so why there are so many spiders up here is beyond my understanding. I think back to "Charlotte's Web" and seem to recall all of Charlotte's little babies being carried away on a wind; perhaps several dozen were carried right to me. I've had numerous moments of being stopped by the beauty of the Seattle summer through my windows, only to cringe when walking closer and seeing all those little legs and round little bodies. Part of me has had the very strong urge to take a broom to the webs and tear them to pieces; however, most of the webs are unreachable from the inside and would require me to harness myself up and drop down from the roof, and my fear of heights is stronger than my fear of spiders. And then, there's also this developing Buddhist within me, who believes that all life is sacred (only last week, I spent almost 20 minutes trying to help a bee find his way from Alex's office to the open window, when I had oh so many opportunities to simply smoosh him and call it a day). Spiders are supposed to be good for all kinds of things (hell, Charlotte could spell whole words in her web) and I know many un-Buddhists who think killing spiders does more harm than good. But how could I live with all this creepiness right outside my windows? In Alex's office, I counted 9 spiders crawling on 9 webs, in only 1 window, leaving barely a spot of web-free glass! Unacceptable, I said. And yet...

Alex found the solution for me. He noticed how few bugs we had flying in our apartment, and considering that there are no screens on the windows and lots of little web coffins on display, there are clearly a number of flying insects on the 10th floor. Alex put it this way: Having all those spiders outside is like being covered in nature's fly swatter. More webs=less bugs. Somehow, that was all I needed to hear. I made my peace with the spiders and thanked them for keeping my home a bug-free zone.

Talk about turning lemons into lemonade.

10 Years Later, 10 Minutes

Just before 5 o'clock this morning, Alex and I made the short walk from our home to Seattle Center, under an almost-full yellow moon setting in the west, under the Space Needle shining a beam of light into the heavens and flying an American flag at half-mast. We were heading to the International Fountain to be part of a day of reflection. The event was organized by a group called 10+ Seattle, and the intention was to have people gather at the fountain, at any point during the day, and then sit in silent reflection for at least 10 minutes. This was not a protest of any kind (though of the maybe 20 people already gathered at the fountain at 5am, half were holding signs which stated "OUR GRIEF WAS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR ENDLESS WAR"--we chose to find a spot a good distance from them). This was more about community, compassion, and yes, reflection. The Fountain during summer days is filled with swim-suited children who run through streams of choreographed water; it's a place filled with joy and laughter. This morning, it was mostly silent, and while water flowed from the fountain, it was the sound of a babbling brook rather than orchestrated explosions of water. There were candles lit along the perimeters, many placed there by the organizers, many more being brought by the people who were gathering. We sat, in silence, and I cried. I leaned my head on Alex's shoulder, and I remembered that day, 10 years ago...

We were in Seattle then. I woke up early, before 6am, with no good reason, I simply couldn't sleep. I remember lying on my floor, doing some stretches, and wondering why I was awake. The phone rang at around 7:30, which was unusual, and it was Zoe, asking me if I was watching TV. By the time I turned it on, the towers were already down. I remember the shock. I remember having to pull myself away from the TV some hours later to go to a doctor's appointment. I remember walking to the clinic as if I was walking under water. Everything was surreal. I felt like the world should have stopped spinning or something, and yet here I was on a table in a doctor's office getting my yearly exam, listening to small talk between the nurses. Seattle seemed to be unaware that the world we knew had been drastically altered. I felt impossibly far away from my family, from the place I knew as home for so many years. I remember going back to our apartment, and I think I spent the next 2 days watching TV, until I could no longer bear it. I remember going downtown to Westlake Center a few days later, where there was a gathering for a national moment of silence. Alex and I held hands as we walked there, and we were both surprised and grateful to see that there were bodies pressed against each other for blocks; it was the first time I felt that Seattle understood. Thousands of people, and for an entire minute, there was no sound, nothing except the shrieks of seagulls. I remember that night going to the Fountain at Seattle Center, where people had been gathering all week. Again, so many people, and candles and flowers and pictures. And silence. Language felt unnecessary, because we were all feeling the same things. I remember a sense of community that I'd never experienced before. I remember feeling hope. I remember.

Alex and I sat this morning for about 30 minutes, and the original 20 who were there when we arrived had expanded to about 100. Bells rang at 5:46 in observance of the North Tower impact, which is about when we made our way home, then rang again at 6:03, 6:37, and 7:03 to signify the 3 impacts which followed. The sky turned a brilliant pink, then yellow, and now white as the sun makes it's way over the Cascades and brings full daylight to this day of remembrance. 10 years later.

What is it about a decade that is so significant? Why do the events of 10 years ago feel fresher to me today than they have for the past 5 anniversaries? Because they do. I feel a sadness today that is mixed with some anger which I didn't feel a decade ago. I know that anger was an emotion experienced by most Americans. It's an emotion which allowed so many of us to sound the battle cry for war. I didn't feel anger then; I felt grief, and I felt hope, which eventually faded as the country's anger swelled and that sense of community I experienced drifted away to "you're either with us or against us" ideas of what REAL Americans are and what REAL Americans do. My country today feels as divided as it's ever been in my lifetime, which makes me sad, and it makes me angry. I felt angry this morning as we were walking away from what was a powerful experience of reflection and I saw that in addition to the signs stating OUR GRIEF WAS NOT AN EXCUSE FOR ENDLESS WAR, they were also holding pictures of Abu Ghraib and bloodied bodies on dusty roads in foreign lands. I agree with their anti-war sentiments; I strongly disagree with their choice to turn a chance for community into a "with us or against us" situation. Because at some point today, someone who is coming to this place in order to reflect and feel a connection with others, someone like me, is going to feel attacked by those images, as I did, and is going to say something, which will most likely turn into an argument, which will absolutely not be silent, nor will it embrace community. Because I did want to tell them to put those signs away, and I did have to pull Alex's arm to redirect him back towards our path home. We both wanted to say something, but neither of us wanted to take anything away from those other people gathered in silence with no agenda other than reflection. There is a time and place for such images; this isn't it. As the handout provided by the 10+ organizers states:

TEN YEARS LATER, ON SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011, ONCE AGAIN THE INTERNATIONAL FOUNTAIN WELCOMES ALL WHO WISH TO BE TOGETHER AND TURN OUR THOUGHTS AND HEARTS TOWARD HUMANITY'S GREATEST STRENGTH--COMPASSION.

Even as I type that, I feel my anger dissolving. I cannot blame people who are angry about war; I'm angry, too. For many people, who've never been to NYC or DC, who do not have friends or family there, who do not have childhood memories of looking down from the top of the Twin Towers and feeling as if her feet were going to slip up off of the floor and tip her over, for many people the greatest impact of 9/11 is the decade of war that has followed. For those people, it was the launching point into unnecessary bloodshed and violence. Violence doesn't have to beget violence, but in this case, it did. In this case, it escalated the violence in such a way that there is no foreseeable end to it. Yes, I understand the anger. I remember marching through the streets of Seattle just months after 9/11 with a group organized by a Catholic Church to speak out against the war in Afghanistan, a war which was overwhelmingly supported by the citizens of this country. I don't claim to be a pacifist, but I did see an opportunity for a worldwide community that was lost as soon as we shouted out for revenge. Yes, I understand the anger. And the disappointment. And the grief. But this morning, this day, this is not about the mistakes made after 9/11; rather, it is about remembering the community we became, for a brief time, in the days that followed.

I have done my best not to watch television this week, as I knew there would be much build-up surrounding this anniversary, and I wanted to experience it in my own way. I did watch a video about the 9/11 Memorial which will be opened today, and I cried. I don't mind crying; I don't mind feeling the grief that I felt this morning as I sat on the edge of the fountain and let my silence fill me. I just don't want to be told what to feel, or shown images to remind me of what I'm expected to feel. I remember that day, I remember it well. I don't need any help remembering. What I need is for my country to feel like a community again, and in order for that to be even a possibility, I need to be with others who embrace that beautiful concept of compassion.

I hope you'll join me today in letting go of some of this anger which lives in all of us. I hope you'll join me in letting go of WITH US OR AGAINST US and embracing the idea that we all have the same basic wants and needs. I hope you'll take 10 minutes to sit in silence and just reflect, for yourself, on what all of this means to you. It was a powerful experience for me. And I hope you'll join with the nation at 1pm EST, 10am PST, for a minute of silence. I hope we feel like a community again, for even one minute.

Name these kittens!

I have a kitten sleeping against my thigh. And another one sleeping at my feet. Heaven!

On Friday, Alex and I found our perfect furry companions in a pair of 9-week old brothers. We adopted them from PAWS Cat City as soon as they were brought in. I looked into a carrier, saw a little white face, and fell in love. Alex was right there with me. Then, a little grey faced popped up beside the little white face, and it was double love. They were very nervous, which is understandable, as they'd just been transported to yet another new location, and they'd been neutered only one day before. But love makes all things seem possible, and we brought them home, hoping that 1) the kittens would get along with each other, and 2) the kittens would want to play with us. SCORE!! These little guys are the very best of friends, constantly wrestling each other (and chasing each others tails, which is stupidly cute), and when one is ready to take a nap, he hops into the bed and mews for his brother to come join him, which he does! They generally sleep curled up with each other (this is the first time I've seen them sleeping separately) which makes them look like a yin & yang symbol:

They are total snuggle brothers!

And they seem to be falling in love with me and Alex. The grey guy has been a lover from day 1, letting us pick him up and pet him, turning into a little purr machine. The white guy is a bit more reserved (though in every other way, he is the more adventurous of the two), but seeing as how that's the one curled up against my thigh, purring away, I'd say he's warming up pretty quickly. It's been nothing but love and looniness in this apartment for 4 days straight!

And now, we have to name them! They came with names (Taz for the white guy and Kashi for the grey) but we're not keeping those. Alex's immediate thought (which says so much about the man I love) was Beavis and Butthead. No way, not even a little bit. We then started thinking of brothers we could name them after: Groucho and Harpo, Bo & Luke Duke, Wilbur & Orville Wright, Michael & Tito, Charlie Sheen & Emilio Estevez. Those didn't stick. Other famous pairs: Abbott & Costello, Kirk & Spock (Alex is a fan of this idea), Ponch & John (from CHiPs), Fonzie & Chachi, Crockett & Tubbs (from "Miami Vice"--I'm a fan of this idea, but Alex says no way), Lenny & Squiggy, Cheech & Chong, Starsky & Hutch (which goes well with The Camaro). So many possibilities, but what to choose, what to choose...?

Alex started calling this guy Smokey...

...which means this little guy would be The Bandit.

Smokey and The Bandit. It just might stick...

Have any ideas you'd like to share? Send them my way!!

Labor Day already? But summer has just begun!

It was 80 degrees in Seattle today. Beautiful. It felt like summer. It's supposed to be like this all week. Summer. Yes, here in Seattle, we are feeling the arrival of summer just in time for football season. Sigh.

Seeing as how I didn't post anything on this blog for the majority of summer, I'd like to give a quick highlight reel of Summer '11. Here goes...

This is the Rat City Rollergirls Roller Derby Championship bout. Alex and I celebrated our 15th quasi-anniversary by renting a suite at Key Arena for the event and bringing in some friends to cheer on the ladies.

And oh how we cheered when Grave Danger beat The Throttle Rockets!

Our dear friend, TJ, came for an awesome visit from LA. (This pic was taken in mid-July. Does that look like summer to you?) We toured Seattle, travelled to Vancouver, listened to lots of music from 80's hair bands, watched some awful movies starring Travolta and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, ate great seafood...it was a good time had by all, and I can't wait for her to come back next summer (hopefully when it actually feels like summer).

We went back to Windham, NY for a reunion with Barbara's Bi-Illogical Family, and...

I got to see Barbara fall in love with her grandparents. And vice versa!

And we got to go to NYC to meet our new niece, who was about as big as my size 7 foot (and who was also seemingly offended by it, from the look on her face).

Another visit to Vancouver, this time with Alex and his mom. (We actually had some pretty great weather, even allowing for an afternoon without a jacket!)

Turns out, our place is right near a parade route, so we got great seats to lots of them, from Gay Pride to the Lions Club to the Sea Fair Torchlight Parade. Pretty awesome perk to our downtown location!

We also have a good spot for watching the Blue Angels during Sea Fair.

I got to take lots of walks to the waterfront with Alex (hey, that totally looks like summer!)

And last, but certainly not least...

WE GOT KITTENS!!! A Labor Day treat. (Don't worry, there will be LOTS more pics of these adorable little fuzzbuckets coming soon.)

And so, I wish you a very happy Labor Day, and I hope your summer has been full of joy. It's been a good one here, but it also feels like it's just getting started. I'm wearing tank tops all week to celebrate!

The hunt has begun....

Now that we know we are ready for a kitten, Alex and I are wasting no time in making it happen! We spent an hour at the Seattle Rescue Center yesterday, cuddling kittens and doing our best not to walk away with every one of them. I was extra-good at that last part, because we ended up leaving empty-handed, all because of me. It's not that I didn't see anything I liked. I mean, we're talking KITTENS here, I liked them all, I wanted them all, but somehow, it just didn't feel right. And I can't say why. It's not as if I'm looking for the perfect little friend, and really, a kitten is an entirely different creature from the cat it will one day become, so I wasn't looking for the perfect feline personality. I don't know what I'm looking for. I got lucky with She-ra. She-ra was one of only 2 kittens available on that May day in 1995 when I went with my roommate (who was fully in charge of the kitten project; after all, it was his decision and his parenting responsibility, I was just along for the kitten-picking, until said roommate decided to go galavanting in Europe 4 months later and She-ra was left under my care, for the rest of her 15.5 years) to go kitten-shopping at the Boston pound. The other kitten was painfully cute and even more painfully shy, while She-ra was kinda scruffy but oh so happy to jump right out of her cage and make friends with us humans. We figured that her demeanor was a better match for our college-party lifestyle. Like I said, I got lucky with her, in that she was very low-maintenance, she was quiet, she was affectionate without being needy...what the hell, she was perfect. But she was NOTHING like that outgoing kitten I met at the pound. So I'm not looking for the cat who will be living with me for the next 15-35 years when I'm looking at a kitten; I know better than that. I'm just looking for something to love. But somehow, as much as I loved the little faces I saw yesterday, none felt like The One. Which is kinda crazy. I mean, look at these guys:

How could I not love these little fuzzbuckets? How could I not take them home? The little yellow one was cuddly and affectionate, and his grey & white brother, while a total scaredy-cat, was so soft, I wanted to put him under my cheek and take a nap on him. But somehow, I said no, even as Alex had the adoption papers in his hand. It just didn't feel right.

We're off today to another shelter, and who knows, the next little face you see here might be the newest addition to our untraditional family.