Dry Dry Dry
2003-12-29
9:42 p.m.

Ugh, my lips are so dry. My skin is so dry. It's like the desert is just leaching it all out of me. The Boston skin routine is clearly not going to cut it here, so I have to figure out a new one. I've been slathering on body oil in addition to the moisturizer which has been helping a bit, but now I've got to solve the face problem. So, so dry and flaky. I'm not used to needing more than sunscreen. I think I may even need a night cream. Acculumating multiple creams makes me feel old and Ms. Havisham-esque. Though she doesn't seem a picture of moisture. But whatever. Ah, the old days, when all I needed was a lip balm. Black cherry. Sigh.

Anyway.

Maverick, the Giant Orange Man Cat, woke me up this morning by smearing a wee bit of poo right near my head. Lovely. The poor man can't reach his own ass to clean it, I understand that, but he doesn't even TRY anymore. I feel like I'll spend my whole life chasing my cat around with a wad of wet toilet paper. He loves it. When my husband does it, he'll swipe at him. When I do it? He lays down, makes eye contact and lets his back legs twitch. It's really disconcerting.

In other cat news, I don't think Chelsea has once pooped in the box since we got here. She poops near it, which is progress, I suppose. She also somehow found the empty lid of the litter box (I haven't put it on yet, too much change in the litter department frightens them) and peed in it. She won't pee in the litter box with litter in it, but she'll pee in a litter box without litter in it. Odd. Also, smelly.

And to wrap up all four of them:

Chewy touched noses with me ON PURPOSE the other day, all of this while SOLICITING petting and PURRING. This is very huge. He isn't an affectionate boy. I think it was my Christmas present.

Molly eats separately. I noticed she wasn't eating in the communal room, so I put her dishes on the top shelf of the closet in our bedroom. She eats while we're sleeping. Squee to the cute kitty noises of crunchy food and water drinking! (I am insane.)

I have a million topics today, so please don't look for this entry to make sense.

I've decided I have too many books. I have been purging my collection and hauling whole car loads to the used book store. When they've picked out what they want and given me my trade receipt, I take their rejects to the other locations of their chain (ha ha), where they then take more and give me more money. This rules and entertains me. FYI, if anyone wants my (former) copy of the Unofficial Guide to Mary-Kate and Ashley, Speedway and Wilmot rejected it, but Grant and Campbell snatched that puppy right up. Suckers.

The only problem with going to the used book store this much is that I inevitably buy stuff while I'm there. I guess I'm leaving a whole box behind and coming out with just one or two books or magazines, and I'm paying for them with credit, but still. It seems to defeat the minimalist purpose. I don't think I have a shot in hell of ever being a minimalist, seeing that my mother died when I was 12 and my father still has all of her school bulletin boards ready and raring to go on top of the pingpong table that no one has actually ever been able to use due to the fact that it has been covered in stuff since day one. To my dad's credit, most of the debris is books, and you can't have too many random books when you're raising total dorks who will read the entire Harvard Classics one summer just because they're bored. (I was a pasty child. On a semi-related note, I only left the house today to water the palm trees. Which I'm not even sure you're supposed to water. But anyway.) But some of it is inexplicable. There is an air hockey table ON TOP of the ping pong table. And there is additional stuff on top of the air hockey table. So no one has ever used either. Hooray! This is the only reason I do not curse my current lack of a basement. If I had a basement, I would keep the inflatable South Park couch that is currently in my Give Away box. And the Tea Cattle (which, clearly, is a tea kettle shaped like a cow.) And the video collection circa Adam Sandler Is Hilarious. But, Hark, I will give them all away. And I will be free. Or I will have less stuff. Or some combination of both.