When Pat Buchanan is an itty bit optimistic about something, it is time to be scared...

It is not for no reason that Sarah is considered the family lowbrow (unless you go over to the Hibbs side where the competition is extremely strong...hehehehehe...)... However, I must say for the first time in my long life I have found a poet that I like! Well, other than T.S. Eliot but that is probably just 'cause all depressives identify with "The Wasteland." Anyway, I guess others like him too since he is the Poet Laureate of the U.S. - Billy Collins. Anyway, you all simply must read this the funniest poem ever. (The Country is the title.)

I have been reading a book which just happens to be about a heroic spinster...with a cat! The book is "The Hiding Place" by Corrie Ten Bloom, a Dutch woman whose great faith in spinsterhood and cats...erm, I mean God...led her to risk her and her family members necks hiding Jewish people from the the Nazis in WWII. She is the good kind of spinster! One with a dramatic story of lost love that led to eternal spinsterhood. She fell in love with a real loser who seemed to return her affections...for a time. Though he never actually proposed, they talked about how many children they would have (pretty racy talk for the time, I am sure) so she was pretty sure a proposal was imminent...until he showed up to pay respects to her family with his fiance! Now, to be fair, Corrie's own brother told her early on that the man would never marry her because his whole family hung their hopes on him marrying for money, but Corrie was living by a river in Egypt!!! The Nile! Heheheehe. (Denial, get it??) After this heartbreak, she embraced spinsterhood. Which is a much better story than, "oh, I guess I just never wanted to marry anyone who wanted to marry me..."

Unfortunately, Maher Shalal Hashbaz (the cat) does not figure into the story very prominently so far... Corrie just worries about what became of the cat (and the Jews left behind in the secret hiding place) after the whole household was arrested. Hopefully, the Jews got out safely and remembered to let the cat out too... But, I fear the worst...

Guess how many places I have lived since I was 14 year old? 14! What a coincidence. Oh, the funny letters I found when I was digging through old letters trying to find my old addresses. It is sad that I will not have funny letters from you all NOW THAT YOU DON"T SEND ME ANY! Ah, that is the sad thing about email... No more snail mail to be thrown in a box to shock and amuse 20 years later...

Woo-hoo! I have had a very inspired evening! For about 4 years, I have been thinking that I should get a social security card with my name spelled correctly and fill out the OH bar application in case I ever want to take the bar. Tonight, I printed out the applications for both! Goooooooooo Sarah! What will I do next? Does anyone have his/her old address book from 1992? I have to list all my addresses since I was fourteen on the bar application!!! I can't remember the address for the place I lived with Beth Anne in Atlanta in 1992. Lemme know if you have the address! If I can't figure it out, you might have to drive on over there, Summer!

Ashcroft is an idiot. The only thing that he could do to increase support for the PATRIOT Act is act like he no longer likes it... Geez, where did he go to elementary school...

Phantom was back this morning! Normally she is so drugged out on her phenobarbital that she is not really herself. She doesn't do a very good job of cleaning her fur and she sleeps much more than normal cats (it scarcely seems possible...) The medicine also dulls her extremely friendly personality. Before she started to take the medicine, she was totally tireless in her efforts of be petted... Last night, I fell asleep and forgot to give her the medicine, so this morning I was awakened by the phenobarb-free friendly Phantom of old who demands to be petted by womping me on the my cheek with her paw. She womped me until I woke up and petted her. The rountine is that when I stop petting her, she womps me on the cheek until I pet her again. This continues until she tired of being petted. So, it looks like we are taking turns petting each other! It is the cutest thing. I really need to tape it for one of those America's funniest pet videos shows! I wanted to get up and tape it this morning but my hair looked terrible and I couldn't waste lots of time because I had to give her the medicine before she had a seizure.

But, it was nice to have my kitty back for a few minutes. An hour later, she was a drugged slug again. Maybe one fine day her seizures will disappear as mysteriously as they came. Her vet says it is entirely possible.

Today I went to the Humane Society and played with kitties! Then, I went to watch LeTonda's niece and nephew play their sports. It was a kitty and kiddy filled day! I tried to tackle LeTonda and she clunked me on the ground twice... Eek. I need to work on my technique...

I have been wasting so much time on Spinsters With Cats that I have been neglecting you, my little bloggy...

But on to wasting more time... We had our second Spinsters With Cats meeting last night. The meeting was surprisingly well attended - 7 people (though not everyone was there at the same time...) Apparently, spinsters with cats are financially flighty because no one felt herself sufficiently reliable to be treasurer... Personally, I don't know what kind of influx of cash they are expecting through t-shirt sales, a kissing booth, and cat treat sales... But, I have to admit, the Spinsters With Cats t-shirt prototypes are pretty darn cute....so, wildfire-like sales are not totally out of the question!

We did decide to use all sales/fundraising proceeds for charitable purposes. I introduced this idea because I figured we could more stuff if we assure folks that the money would not be squandered on spinster strip club nights or beer for Sarah. Sadly, SWC seems to be a noteably non-drinking group (though, one member did barf in a fellow member's car just last week...)

We created a few more club officers, the silliest of which is the How to Remain A Spinster Sex Tips Coordinator (or something like that...) My suggestion was to have an officer in charge of interesting website content in general, but this was shot down... Despite the fact that I came up with the sex tips this idea, I think that we shouldn't have anything too racy because we don't want to offend any potential donors or paraphenalia (sp?) purchasers...

The meeting was so action packed that we did not get to some important items on the agenda...the fall formal, a position statement on psychoactive drugs for cats, automatic expulsion of member for practicing or advocating the practice of beastiality, rejection of candidates for membership who divorce solely to join SWC (it can only be a minor factor...)

On a unrelated note, co-worker Paul has gotten yet another compliment on his newly slimmer physique and he failed to credit Sarah for the diet tip that made it all possible! How quickly they forget...

Sarah's thoughts have been so boring lately that she has not bothered to share... Plus, I have been busy with Spinsters With Cats activities. Right now, April and I are trying to make our site show up in search engines like Google and Yahoo. I submitted the site to Google a couple of hours ago but so far nothing has happened. April is too busy playing the world's most mind bogglingly boring video game (called Stickit) to help with the effort this evening.

Sarah's thoughts have been so boring lately that she has not bothered to share... Plus, I have been busy with Spinsters With Cats activities. Right now, April and I are trying to make our site show up in search engines like Google and Yahoo. I submitted the site to Google a couple of hours ago but so far nothing has happened. April is too busy playing the world's most mind bogglingly boring video game (called Stickit) to help with the effort this evening.

As I said in my last post, the chicken might come home to roost if you harm rodents (or are just a plain idiot..)... http://www.igorilla.com/gorilla/animal/2002/python_strangles_owner2.html

I have been doing some summer/fall cleaning the last few weekends... Today I came across a diary that escaped the mass diary destruction of my mid twenties. I actually do not remember when I chunked the diaries in the dumpster... This one might have been written after that. Actually, I am pretty sure that it was... I threw my diaries away because I could not stand the thought that someone would read them after my death and discover what I disturbed individual I was. Erm, luckily, I am better now. Anyway, this excerpt will show why the diaries had to be destroyed...

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10/31/1997

I think that it is too late to give an accurate account of the lives of Pinky, Slinky, and Arthur. Much shall be a romanticization since I began this effort so belatedly. I want to write a narrative of their little lives before they are gone and I can't remember their names, like the hamsters of my youth. Or, more likely, I will name all my subsequent rats Pinky and I will get the all confused. (NOTE TO READERS FROM 2003 - The prophecy came true! Over the years I kept renaming my rats the same names...) I want to remember them all as they were when I read this later.

I think that I first hit upon the idea of getting rats when I was at a doctor's or dentist's office. One of the magazines was called "Furry Animals" or "Critters" or something. The magazine article described various pet rodents and said that rats made the best pets because they were both smart and affectionate. I really don't believe I ever had a thought about getting a pet rat before that moment. I do not remember how much time elapsed before I acted.

I am going to leave the scribbling table for a moment to do some historical resarch. I am going to go over and look in my filing cabinet to see if I can find the receipt for Pinky's purchase. "Purchase." Hee hee. What a word to describe getting a pet.

As often happens in life, a great moment escaped documentation. I guess one never knows how much a pet is going to mean to one. I guess it is like buying what later becomes your favorite shirt. Rarely does one recognize it when one sees it.

Anyway, my mind conceived of purchasing a rat in the latter half of June, 1996. I really only remember the date because Pinky escaped (or was captured, I can't remember which) on July 4th, 1996. (NOTE TO READERS: Truly a weird story that I did not see fit to elaborate on at the time... I lost Pinky outside and several days later I saw her outside and recaptured her! What were the odds!?!)

I remember that Aaron Frank was going to accompany me to pick out my rat. However, a friend of his came by his apartment and stayed so long that the pet store closed. So, I went the next day alone. I had called several pet stores to locate some baby rats. I think that I had to call several places.

Avondale Mall in midtown had a pet store that had some "young rats." I asked about baby rats, but they seemed to be confused by the concept. I went into the pet store and didn't see any rats around. They had them in the back in this icky closet like room.

They had three sizes of rats - small, medium and large. I suppose that these characterizations had something to do with their value as food for snakes with sicko owners. We wonder why people are so cruel to each other when this sort of barbarism is considered socially acceptable. Ask not why you are the victim of random violence, snake owner... Enough social commentary. Anyway, I was disgusted with the place and their treatment of the rats. Just right now I remember the disgust I felt toward the sales girl. She was ugly and fat and had dyed hair. I remember wondering if she even liked animals....

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It continues in this vein for a long long time... Apparently, I must have exhausted myself because the next entry is six months later!

Things have gone downhill. I am now having auditory hallucinations. This morning I was awakened by the phone (something I hate on Sunday mornings in any event...) so I pressed the pillow down on my head to drown out the phone. Then, I heard someone say "Sarah" pretty close to where I was, in my bed. Since I didn't expect anyone to be in my apartment, I sort of woke up and looked around. I even got up and checked the answering machine, though I knew that it was not a voice from that because I can't hear it from my room anyway. There was no message at all so I looked outside of my open window and there was no one there. I hope I don't receive some sort of message tomorrow in which the next word is "kill..."

I would have thought it was my friend Dan because he has a key to my apartment and often comes in and wakes me up by saying "Sarah" but it wasn't his voice and he doesn't normally run away when I get up anyway. And, he came over a few hours later and said "Sarah" as he normally does and he denied that he came over earlier. It definitely was the voice of an unknown person, anyway. A male voice, I believe.

I wish I had some Doritos now...

Who is this Spanky who signs my guestbook? I thought he/she was a friend of Summer's but she thinks he/she is a friend of mine...

My cat empire has expanded! Currently, I have double the normal amount of furry creatures under my control. Ah, the power... I am taking care of the three misfits known collectively as "Heather's cats" and also Dana's little hellions. Dana's hellion Scout seems to forgotten the foster mother who nursed her from kittenhood (oh, wait, that was Elsa..) Well, she forgot Elsa (her biological (cat) mother), too! Ah, how quickly the little ones grow up and forget us...

Shannon did not really do the eerie story of Phantom's empathy justice... Yesterday, a downtrodden and depressed Shannon came over after her doctor's appointment. She splat herself down on the bed in a depressed heap (an all too familiar sight in my apartment...) Phantom, shaking off her phenobarbital haze, waddled over, struggled up on the bed, and flopped down next to Shannon. Then, she reached out to pat Shannon with her paw several times before resting her it lightly on Shannon's arm in a comforting gesture. It was so extremely cute. As with the saintly late Princess Diana, suffering has apparently heightened Phantom' compassion.

Not that I am bitter, but I was lying in a depressed heap for hours that morning with no noticeable reaction from Phantom...

Guess what!? I am the inaugural president of Spinsters with Cats! I am not sure whether I am up to the responsibility, but greatness was thrust upon me in a unanimous vote. For my leadership mantra, I call to mind the wise words of Stanislaw Lem - "Cannibals prefer those who have no spines."

The Spinsters with Cats website and blog are coming soon, as soon as our inaugural webmaster gets off her spinsterish butt and makes them. We are working on SWC t-shirts and I am going to propose that we wear the shirts and pants with stretchy waistlines to every meeting. But, the president only has so much power... I suspect that the other members do not embrace their spinsterhood enough to start wear stretch pants. I tried on a rather dashing pair today at J.C. Penny's...

Going out to have some booze... Expect silly drunken post later.

The loss of a friend and then a beloved is bad enough, but fate has dealt Sarah an especially cruel blow today when the cat knocked over one of her most prized possessions - one of her brown big bellied lamps. It clunked against the computer and broke to pieces. It and its big bellied twin were always going to be the centerpieces of my new cool pad that one fine day when I develop some taste and redecorate... Had time to catch the lamp but was too apathetic after the funeral. So, I watched it fall. Sorry my big bellied friend. We will be together again soon enough. Guide me in the selection of your replacement from above. Say hello to the Pinkys for me.

I got my first guestbook flame!

"Sarah, this is pathetic. No one cares about your boring life." From an anonymous writer. This is the first evidence that my blog was read by someone I don't actually know (since any of my friends (already known to have expressed the same sentiments) would just sign their names, I would think...) Could be a family member, though. They are a kind of weaselly bunch.

Watch out, 'cause it is getting more boring by the moment...

Tonight is the second ever meeting of "Spinsters with Cats." For the first meeting, the requirements for membership were:

1. Ownership of at least one cat.
2. Attainment of age 30.
3. Confirmed spinsterhood.

The idea for "Spinsters with Cats" was born long ago but tensions in the group arose over the name "Spinsters with Cats" and lack of organization. At the first meeting, I personally wanted to drink a lot of booze, adopt bylaws and talk about cats and spinsterhood. The other two attendees didn't drink anything and did not seem to want to talk specifically about cats and spinsterhood. They have not been invited to the second meeting. There is a new requirement for invitation to the group. You have to simply love the name "Spinsters with Cats" and you have to relish discussions of spinsterhood and cats (I mean, hence the name...)! Also, you have to like silly group formalities like adopting by-laws, making t-shirts and electing officers. Two good things came out of the first meeting however. I was introduced to the world's best cleaning product (and the only product that lives up to its advertising claims) Resolve carpet cleaner and I was inspired to adopt a couple of homeless cats from the parking lot (mixed blessing...).

A few years ago I was visiting an old friend of my now deceased grandmother and she was telling me about a social club she and my grandmother started when they were young. I can't remember the purpose of the group, but each time they met they would sign the meeting book. The reason I remember the book is because I thought it was so weird that they all signed their names as "Mrs. My Husband's Name." For example, my grandfather's name was Lacy Hibbs so my grandmother signed as "Mrs. Lacy Hibbs." So, I think that I am going to get a fancy guestbook for tonight and we can all sign with our prospective husbands' names! I am sure that Dana will be Mrs. Colin Farrell. I, of course, will sign as Mrs. Bill Gates since we all know that Sarah is opposed to the practice of changing to one's husband's name unless the husbo is old Bill... Of coures, I am not hoping for the demise of the current Mrs. Bill Gates or anything like that...

Okay. This is the absolute, last, final draft, unless one of you readers has some feedback...

The Hairball Cat...

Oh blog, oh blog, why I have forsaken you... Erm, I know why! I have developed an unhealthy obsession for editing the The Hairball Cat! I tried to resist the impulse to work on it today but my resolved quickly dissolved and I changed the color of the kitten and made it a little bigger since Robert said it looked like a rat. I am just going to reload those five pictures and that is it!!! No more for the day. I have to move on to more important activities like reading my book or writing email messages.

My co-worker asked about a sequel and I had an intriguing thought about the hairball cat emerging from the trashcan for revenge, but that is going to have to wait for another day. Despite the childish look of my pictures, the creation process is very taxing on Sarah. Coworker Paul gave me my first every literary review on his blog!!!!

The Hairball Cat is back in commission!