Who will love my ironies?

One day when I was fourteen and dealing with a lot of upheaval at home, I came home to a little calico kitten that my family had picked up for me out of a litter in a cardboard box at a carnival down by Lac La Biche. Her name was Diesel, which did not last because lol; instead I named her Sillabub, because I was really into Cats as a kid (also known as Jemima, she's the kitten who sings the couple of reprises of Memory in Act 2). And then, for well over two decades, she was my constant companion. She was weird, and funny, and kind of a bully, and loud, and sweet, and messy, and ornery, and clumsy, and snuggly, and annoying, and I loved her more than the sun, and she died quietly next to me at about four in the morning after watching the Collision half of Grand Slam and then listening to the OBC of Cats just to be dramatic. She straight up waited until The Journey to the Heaviside Layer before everything stopped. Couldn't have asked for a better ending, really.

Couldn't have asked for a better cat.

I was really worried that I'd be tempted to make some poor monetary decisions today, like Wendy's breakfast (those french toast sticks, man, so good), but then my stomach saved my wallet when I woke up feeling like utter garbage. Maybe pounding back clam chowder and Jalapeno Crispers while I finished watching the Oscars after work was a bad choice. Guess we'll never know!

5. What Temperature Do You Set the A/C or Heat To Be Comfortable?

If I lived on my own, it'd be like... 21 degrees in winter and 25 degrees in summer, probably. But I don't, I live with babies who can't abide even the hint of warmth, so after about a year of a battle of wills in which I was very willing to make concessions, but the other side was not and kept making it fucking frigid in summer or turning the heat off overnight in those awkward mid-season periods so I woke up seeing my breath, I had to put the hammer down and lock it down to 23.5 degrees, year-round. I WAS WILLING TO COMPROMISE, THIS IS ON Y'ALL.

Watched 03/10/24: The 96th Academy Awards (2024)

Hey, speaking of. Oscar breakdown time, from the bottom of the card on up!

( The 96th Academy Awards )

Teddy died last night. The decline was very swift and steady as soon as we got home Friday night, so at least there were no surprises, but fuck, I'm sad. I spent both nights sleeping on the couch to keep her company, since she couldn't really go anywhere else. By yesterday morning, she couldn't stand up on her own anymore, so we just spent the day snuggling on the couch until she tried to head back over to her corner and I helped her along. We went out to see All Out at the theatre, and she must have left pretty shortly after we said goodbye, since she was already stiff when we got back, right where we left her. I'll always wonder what might have happened if we'd been in a position to have a vet see her when she first fell sick last week (living somewhere they don't cost thousands of dollars just to see, not currently strapped for money on all fronts, not about to drive five hours for cancer treatments that really could not be rescheduled, etc.), if she could have been saved, if it would have been feasible or worth it, but after that night, she never seemed to be in any pain or distress beyond knowing something was wrong, so I have to believe it all worked out for the best. She was already a senior when we got her, so knowing our time with her would be limited was always part of the arrangement, and I feel really lucky that she fit in so well for the (not quite) five years she stayed with us. But fuck.

She was just. The absolute sweetest thing. Tiny grey ball of the softest fluff with these big six-toed monster paws, the saddest eyes you ever saw, endlessly loving from the instant she came into our home after losing her old one, always climbing onto you looking for hugs or just a warm chest to sleep on. She had to learn to stick up for herself around bossy Bub (and may have eventually learned to be a little bit louder after picking up her bad habits), but never at the cost of her sweetness. Just one of the absolute most loving creatures I've ever known. I'm gonna miss her a whole lot.

Her name was actually Bear, at least for most of her life; her sister was named Teddy, a long-haired black-and-white beauty, and she's the one we were originally going to get, as my mom has always been obsessed with naming something Theodora and calling it Teddy for short and figured that particular Facebook post was a sign. But Teddy had already been given away by the time my mom got there, and she came home with the sad-eyed shorthair instead, deciding to call her Teddy Bear to split the difference (our dog's name was already Little Bear so it'd be too confusing otherwise, obviously).

My brother helped me bury her in the yard this morning (he came back with us to pack up the last of his stuff and was gone again in the afternoon). Not as deep as I'd have liked before we hit too many rocks to keep going, but we found some old broken paving slabs to put on top that should keep her from getting disturbed any time soon. I can't stop thinking about my mom, all alone at that end of the house now, still feeling all scrungly from her first round of chemo and now without her constant cuddle buddy or her son constantly shouting in the room next to hers, but I don't know what to do to help any aside from hanging out in the living room a bit more? And then leaving on vacation for a couple of weeks, I guess!

Ugh, I pretty much just start crying every time I go too long without any distractions, so I guess I'd better keep trying to find distractions or I'm gonna give myself a wicked headache. One more day before I go back to work and I desperately wish I could justify just... not doing that.

A VERY WORMY WALK TO WORK, WORMS EVERYWHERE UGH UGH UGH. Also goddamn do I need to start wearing something with a hood even though winter coat season is behind me, the wind was cold and hard enough that I got a wicked earache that's only just abating now. Still! Ready to settle in for a long, lazy Saturday. I even have last night's Rampage waiting for me on the other side so I have something to look forward to again! Maybe I'll take a bath first, if I'm confident enough that I won't pass out during (I am VERY tired (it was fuckin' worth it, though (all that will be behind a cut, naturally))).

7. Do you pull your band aids off slowly or rip them off quickly?

I've never understood ripping them off quickly! It doesn't hurt at all if you do it slowly! How sticky are your band aids if it does? Are you really that hard up for thirty seconds?? IT'S MADNESS.

Hey, speaking of Madness, TO THE DOCTOR STRANGE SPOILER ZONE:

( oh my god please stop saying incursion )

Okay, time to figure out what I'm ordering for lunch.

Sometimes the original context behind a neat memetic phrase can really blow me away.

Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

It's from an NYT piece called I Know What You Think of Me, by Tim Kreider.

One more day to freedom.

God, this is the first time I update all year, I am the worst.

OKAY. So I saw Age of Ultron with my mom again today when the movie we were gonna see didn't pan out, and I wanna finally get all my feels out since THERE ARE A LOT OF THEM.

( You didn't see that coming? )

X-Men: Days of Future Past. It was a movie. I managed to keep my feelings under 2000 words?

( Yeah. Just... yeah. )

So I skipped going for a run today in favour of not having to wait to read Afterlife with Archie and I regret nothing? I have... a lot of feelings about it.

( Which I will put behind a cut for length and spoilers, although the entire plot of the first issue was pretty widely diseminated as part of the marketing and I don't feel like knowing what happened affected my enjoyment of it anyway? Since everything beyond issue one is still pretty hush-hush so far, and there are only so many ways that a zombie outbreak origin story can go and hahahaha it's only the cut text and I'm already long-winded )

So, I saw Skyfall and I had feelings and I am going to write about them now. This is probably not the best time to do so, since I only just got back and have not organized my thoughts and so one long keysmash would probably say the exact thing with a lot less effort, but I need to get my squee out somewhere, so.

I was really, really worried going in that I'd overhyped myself. I didn't go in knowing much more than 'people liked it' but I've been marathoning Bond films since the beginning of the month in anticipation and I hyped myself to high heaven and even if it was great, which I was expecting it to be, there would still have to be at least a bit of a comedown because holy shit, was I amped. And then it FUCKIN' BLEW ME AWAY, YOU GUYS.

Spoilers, gosh.

( Face it all together... )