Fooling the fiesty

Five Things Phoebe Needs Me to Know Right Now:
1) Whatever that shit I forcefed her this morning was, it wasn't anything resembling reasonable or civilized.
2) Pursuant to number 1, petting, kissing, or other "friendly" contact is entirely out of the question at this time.
3) Hiding said shit in yogurt worked once and only once.
4) Whatever that fish business on the plate this evening was, more would always be welcome.
5) I am hereby on notice for the behavior listed in number 1. Any excessive violations along the lines of number 2 should be executed while understanding that Phoebe's inappropriate urination this weekend on the bed, though a direct result of a UTI, can be easily recreated with malice aforethought as a warning, reprimand, or both.

It seems the stress of moving has inspired Phoebe's poor little bladder to rebel against her with a very unfun infection. Those who have met her can understand the extreme difficulties involved in both getting Phoebe to the vet and following any treatment plan prescribed therein that requires, um, anything other than letting her be. The people who spayed her in Houston (people, I should point out, who deal with feral cats daily) said she was the meanest goddamn cat they'd ever met. That was a few years ago--she's gotten a lot better in day-to-day stuff but still doesn't like anything that isn't substantially her idea.

The vet and I came up with a plan to feed Phoebe her antibiotics: hide the liquid in food. Phoebe is many things, not the least of which is a feline garbage disposal. Loves all food. All. Food. Her favorites are yogurt and tomato products (seperately, not together), but I'm not sure I've found anything yet she just wouldn't eat.

For reasons that entirely escape me, feline antibiotics are made to smell (and, I presume, taste) like bubblegum, just like human antibiotics in liquid suspension. In my experience as a giver of feline antibiotics, this doesn't have the same effect as it does in people, so I wonder why they bother? The immediate problem this presents is the task of masking both the smell and presumed taste in food. This is the cat who managed to sniff out the tranq in the treats I tried to give her during the move to A2, so I am continually afraid she'll smell this. The first dose went pretty well (Fancy Feast Savory Salmon served as the vehicle), as did the second (in strawberry yogurt--her favorite). This morning, however, the yogurt trick didn't work. After two or three bites, she shot me a "bitch, please" look and pawed at the ground near the plate to show me the extent to which she recognized this was utter bullshit and she was having no part of it. Great. Not only did this mean I had a wasted dose of antibiotics on my hands, but she hadn't taken enough for the morning dosage. Running late (as seems to be the norm this week), I decided to ditch the food trickery and go for it with the oral syringe. The dose is only 1cc, so it seemed like a move that might work once.

And work once it did. Barely. After a stealthy surprise attack-and-squirt, a very angry Phoebe broke free and, not knowing quite what to do with this new betrayal, ran around the kitchen four times very fast before taking off under the bed. It only took a few minutes for her rage to get the better of her, though, and for the apparent "fuck this noise, I'm not hiding under any damned bed" thought to strike. With as much anger and spite as her 11 pounds can convey, she marched out from under the bed, flounced upon it, and stomped as far as she could to the head near the wall and laid down with her back to me. As I finished getting ready for school, I noticed her periodically looking over her shoulder to see me, then whipping her head back around with eyes closed. While trying to pet an apology her way before leaving, she slowly turned to face me as if to say "ohhh....don't you fucking dare."

For those in a similar predicament, I am happy to report that the Fancy Feast Fish and Shrimp Dinner, though frightfully odiferous, apparently masks any and all offending antibiotic smells/tastes. Thank. God. Then again, we'll see if it works twice.

Whenever I board my cats at the vet, they always ask if I want them bathed. Bathed? I never know how to respond, because I feel like they're asking if I want to pay for the clinic staff to get really, really hurt, which is weird.

Hominuh? moment of the week

So...what's going on here? This guy--we'll call him Trent (doesn't he look like a Trent?) has gleefully volunteered to demonstrate, um, something involving a duffel bag's less-attractive cousin strung up on a giant clothes rack. In no way does this look like something I'd use theraputically, as the website would like one to do.

I like this sequence a lot; it's as through Trent really wants to make sure we understand that he's using the device to lower himself gently to the floor. It would be a shame for someone to miss that point and try going from the first pose to the third without the intervening gentle lowering action, as that may cause the whole thing to tip which, we can all agree, would be very counterproductive for any theraputic aims.

If you're warming up to Trent, you might like this one...it's a bit less instructional and a little more arty. I think it would be even better with a bunch of doves or puppies around him, but this works, too:

But really, this is the best one, and I'm not even going to touch it:

Hee.

Tired minds, scary thoughts

I just remembered a dream I had last night in which I was trying to find a polite way to complement the Republican baby room decorations someone was showing me. It was an entire wallpaper/bedding/toy/furniture scheme that was supposed to be "baby Republican." I remember one thing on the mobile was a tiny, stretchy London Stock Exchange building.

Yeah, I've got nothing to explain this either. Aside from being pretty sure no one makes such a thing (although someone should really get on it, as I'm sure you could make a killing in the suburbs), there isn't any way I'd be in a position to purchase such a thing. Evar. I dated one Republican once, and it was tremendously disturbing. Besides, at present, I couldn't afford a relationship with a non-Dem if I felt like it. Concerned friends will fine me a total of $3 a day from the start of a Republican encounter until the day I graduate from law school (that's $2 to one collector and an additional $1 to another who liked the idea so much she wanted in on the action). Look, $21 a week is just a lot of money for fundamental mismatch of, well, so many things.

In other news, I highly recommend the soundtrack from the movie Garden State. Good stuff. Upon first listen, I was a little disappointed that the version of "Such Great Heights" is different than the one in the preview (Iron and Wine v. Postal Service). After a few listens of both (thanks, iTunes), I'm actually a much bigger fan on the version on the cd. It's very slow, almost like a lullaby (oh! that's what made me remember the baby Republican dream this morning in the first place...it all comes full circle!) and fits really nicely between Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" and Frou Frou's "Let Go" (which is the same version as they used in the teaser trailer).

Burning bushes: not always spiritual

Last night at a friend's house, I told the story about the time my roommate managed to create total, fiery disaster in the kitchen by trying to steam live crabs in three small posts (as opposed to the one, large pot she couldn't use because it belonged to our Kosher housemate) and managed to a) lose one the of crabs several times on the floor, b) light a plastic grocery sack on fire, and c) splash herself with boiling water as she was doing all of this while wearing a sports bra and a thong. There are many aspects of that scenario that were ill-advised.

Anyway, telling that story made me think of another incident involving fire and shempery. It's important to understand a little about the main player in this story, my uncle "Greg." He's an entrepreneur, currently involved in a vegetarian restuarant/gallery/bookstore (the food is vegetarian, not the art or the books). His last project was a chain of stores that sold new-agey stuff like rocks with peaceful words engraved on the sides, air chairs, and necklaces that read "carpe diem." You know, one of those places where you really liked to shop in middle school for reasons you couldn't fully explain to your parents as you never did anything with the stuff you bought there. That place. For Christmas every year, Greg puts a 50-foot inflatable Santa on his roof and anchors it to the yard with a few strategically-placed cables. Greg likes to get a deal, move it himself, and sometimes errs a bit on the side of results-oriented myopia that tends to overlook the costs along the way.

It came as no surprise when he decided to forego hiring a landscaping service to relandscape his front yard a few years ago and rented a small, front-loading tractor-CAT-thing to use himself. This wasn't a small undertaking by any means; the intent was to completely "reshape" the front yard. His wife, "Jen"--a moderatly wise woman with judgment that's generally more hit than miss, decided to bypass this process entirely and loaded the kids in the car to escape the scene for the day.

Aside from the obvious, the whole thing should have started to appear ill-fated to Greg after the fourth or fifth time he confused the "lower" function for the digging claw with the "release" function. It should be noted that the front claw of this thing held the equivalent of 5 wheelbarrow-fulls of dirt, which he kept depositing on top of himself by accident. After a few hours of scooting dirt piles around the yard (with little success, I'd imagine), Greg decided to attempt something a little more high-yield. A large span of bushes lined one side of their property, and Greg had never liked them. They were strikingly unattractive bushes, and it would be entirely unfair to expect Greg to have known about the substantial colony of wasps that lived among them.

Pause for a second and assemble the scene in your head: dirt-covered Greg in a small tractor amidst piles of dirt, bushes, and swarms of wasps. Clearly, something had to be done about the wasps, and Greg's first thought was to burn them. Being deathly afraid myself of all things that sting, I can't say I'd come up with anything better if I found myself in the same situation. He (rather ingeniously, I think) came up with an idea on the fly for a flame-thrower, made from a fertilizer bottle filled with kerosene, attached to a garden hose. You can control the concentration on those sprayers pretty well, so it was mostly kerosene spraying from the nozzle, with just enough water to give it the necessary pressure to spray. He lit it, and started (successfully) flaming the clouds and clouds of wasps that were swarming above the yard. As one might imagine with a cooler head, however, the flames didn't exactly stay confined to the wasps. It wasn't long before several trees were burning pretty well, which necessitated another of Greg's back-of-the-envelope engineering feats. This one wasn't quite as well-planned as the flame thrower, as it involved using a shovel to break the (now exposed) water main that ran near the front of their property. Why didn't he just detach the kerosene bottle from the hose and use it? No one has ever been able to explain that part, and I suspect no one ever will.

It's unfortunate that Greg's wife drove up at this moment, because I think in another 15 minutes or so the tree fires would have been out. Apparently, if you have a big enough shovel and decent forearm strength, you can do a lot to aim the geyser that erupts from a broken water main. Not surprisingly, Jen didn't stop the car, but continued around the block to my grandparents' house where she stayed with the kids until Greg had had time to a) call the city to repair the water main, b) hire a landscaping crew to make the yard look like something other than a disaster, and c) make many profound and apologetic overtures to her in penance for the $25,000 it cost to fix everything.

Among the many lessons to be learned here, I think the most impressive is the importance of identifying traits like this in people you intend to marry. Well, that, and the fact that a well-stocked garage can produce a flamethrower on short notice, but it might not be a good idea.

It makes him happy

In the past week, I've crossed a threshold I'm not too proud of. I've become That Girl who dresses up her cat. It started when I found a random bandana in my apartment (I think my dad left it here when he helped me move). On a whim, I folded it into a triangle and tied it around Max's neck--like people do for their dogs. Much to my surprise, he didn't try to get it off. In fact, he loved it. There was visible strutting. I didn't want him to keep it on that day while I wasn't home because I don't trust him not to hang himself, but when I held it out for him later that evening, he gleefully stuck his little chin forward so I could slip it back over his head.

A few days later, he lost the bandana (I think it's under the bed somewhere). Currently, he is quite content wearing a chiffon scarf tied in the same way. Pictures are definitely in order--stay tuned.

Does this make me a bad pet owner? I freely admit that I find the sight of scarf-wearing Max to be absurdly funny, so in some measure I keep putting it on him to manufacture my own mirth. But...he loves it. Actually, this reminds me of an episode of The Pet Psychic I saw once (holy shit, I didn't just admit to watching that show!)--this family owned a llama who was really cantakerous. The llama would throw fits and act out all the time. The Pet Psychic had her little chat with him and discovered that he was really jealous of everyone else and their clothes. On camera (which is key here, because I wouldn't have believed this if I didn't see it myself), she offered the llama her scarf--tied it around his neck in a big, floppy bow. Immediately, the llama straightened up, tall and proud, and began strutting around the corral near the camera crew. There was a visible change in the llama's disposition once the bow had been tied. They showed footage later that wasn't originally intended to be part of the show--after the "interview" was over and everyone was standing around, the llama's owner tried to give the PP her scarf back. When he untied it, the llama went apeshit and started bucking. The PP put it back around his neck, and he strutted again. They did a follow-up with the owners a little later to find that the llama was now quite happy with a collection of hats, scarves, and neckties.

Anyway, seeing Max when I give him his scarf is much of the same.

If it has to be overcast...

...I prefer not that of the unforgiving sign of rain.

It's okay, you can reread that as many times as you want and it won't really make sense. It's a line from the opening of my new favorite "editorial," found in the fall issue of The Undergraduate Quarterly.

The UQ is edited and published by a UCLA alum whom I knew of from last year's University of Chicago Law School Applicant Board (UCB, to those in the nerdy, nerdy know). In fact, he posted (at length) in late spring about the launch of the journal, and solicited people's work. I remember thinking at the time that it probably wasn't going to garner quite the cred within academic circles that he was planning, but whatev, cool project. It's pretty questionable, though, that one has to pay a $35 fee to submit a piece for consideration. Such is not the practice of any reputable academic journal, as noted by the venerable Brian Leiter. I have to say, it's quite the trick to be called out in Leiter's blog.

Set the application fee aside, though, and take a browse through the "editorial" by The UQ's editor-in-chief (link above). It's pretty indicative of the overall quality of the rest of the journal. I mean...where to start?

Part the first: I tend to be dramatically opposed to the resident Grammar Check function in Microsoft Word, but I think this qualifies as a place where it could be exceedingly useful. It might point out the author's apparent comma allergy and semi-colon misuse fixation, and hopefully more than half of the clause disagreements.

Part the second: since one of the aims of The UQ is to become a serious, integrity-laden piece of journalistic legitimacy, it seems abundantly wise to avoid publishing pieces that feature the words "shit" and "fuck." Wait, you say, this blog says fuck all the time! Yes, but I'm not trying to make this shit legit in the annals of academia.

Part the third, the most important part: this is bad writing. I mean, bad. (I'm channeling Jenna Elfman in Ed here, when she looks at the camera and announces that her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, played by Woody Harrelson, is a "bad lay...I mean bad...ugh!") Given the self-masturbatory tone to Zaky's bio, the site's "EQ Advantage" section, and the brief "about the author" blurb on the bottom of the editorial's first page, I have no doubt that he'll place his role in founding/editing the journal in the most prominent of places in his law school apps for the coming year. Fully knowing how patronizing and maternalistic this will sound, I think someone needs to tell him "dude, you do not want any law school seeing this. Ever. Evar."

I don't really have a closing thought here. I fully expect a string of nasty comments will follow this post, and that's your prerogative. Before you flame me for being an overly critical bitch, there are two things I'd like to request. First, please sign your comment. I don't care if you don't have a Blogger account, but toss your name or something in the comment itself...calling people on bad behavior anonymously is pussy beyond all measure. Second, I didn't pull the editorial off someone's blog, or personal site, or whatever place where one might have a reasonable expectation of benefit of the doubt for their shitty writing skills. It came from a journal, which you can apparently purchase at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. They (supposedly) circulate this thing through "graduate schools, law schools, medical schools, and university libraries." If you publish and widely circulate a journal, you've opened yourself to the possibility of critique from a number of sources. And this is one of them.

Foot, down

I'm going to go ahead and be a bit of a bitch here, and say that if your study materials include a high school chem text and an SAT prep book, you have no business in the law library reading room. I know, I'm a real hardass about weird things, but come the hell on.

It's not quite what you think

As I went through my application process last year, I remember several people--either then-students or recent law school alums--telling me that law school was remarkably like high school...and they're right. But they're right in the best way: law school is, as far as I can tell, like high school...only it's the way I think we all wished high school could have been. It's the institutional structure of high school without the hassle of parents, curfews, or crippling, adolescent self-doubt. High school for the self-actualized--we're now further on the way to being the grownups we hope to be, we're smarter, more sane, more kind, and we get to take a second swipe at this with all the confidence we wish we'd had when we were 15. What a weird-funny-crazy-beautiful surprise in all of this.

I hope the opportunity to get my car out of the driveway presents itself today. If I don’t go to Home Depot soon to get a new washer for my kitchen sink to stop its incessant dripping, I might lose it.

It’s true that law school changes the way you look at things. The novel I’m listening to this morning—The Pleasure of My Company, by Steve Martin—just asked a question about atonement: “What could be made up for? What could be forgiven?” In the context of my criminal law class, where we’ve spent a bit of time thinking about utilitarian and retributive theories of punishment, I wonder the same thing. The past two weeks have shown me that I’m not much of a retributivist, but I’m not sure I’m very utilitarian either. I met with my crim prof on Friday to talk about my technical argument against the death penalty (a topic for another post), and he asked if I was interested in pursuing criminal law. If someone had asked me that a month ago, I would have been quick to reply that I wouldn’t ever consider it. But now…I don’t know. Of all my classes, it’s by far the most intellectually stimulating to me. Maybe that’s unfair—I’m not sure how stimulating something like contracts can be, particularly since I can’t understand a word of it—but regardless of the reason, I’m continually prompted to think and think and think about the things we encounter each Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoon. I told my prof that I was interested in the class right now, but that I think I might be too squeamish for the profession. He nodded, and said “that’s what everyone thinks. It’s different than you’re imagining it to be.” So noted. He related his experiences at the Washtenaw County public defender’s office the summer after his first year, and sort of suggested I think about doing the same thing—so I could see what that world really looks like. I just might.

The Lawyers know too much

So says the Carl Sandberg poem I'm supposed to read for Legal Practice today. With one day down, I can say that law school is exceptionally fun so far and I'm incredibly glad to be here. I'll admit, I had a moment or twenty on Monday night where the crazy dial was set at filter-rupturing levels...somehow I was letting my lack of knowledge about the level to which we were expected to be prepared throw me for a loop from here to Cleveland. [for the unaware, there are reading assignments for every class in law school prior to the first day--when you show up to the first class, they expect you to have complete said reading and be ready to talk about it.] I finally stopped myself when I realized that 6 pages of crim notes was probably overkill. Ah well, let's just say I was *tremendously* prepared for that class (and, incidentally, it was my favorite class of the day and I spoke about 5 times).

Today is my section's "long day," as we have all four classes. I don't necessarily agree that it's any longer than our Tuesday or Thursday, as the fourth class (Legal Practice) isn't tacked on at the end of the day but fills 55 minutes in our otherwise extremely long break between Property and Contracts.

Property is incredibly interesting. No comment yet on Contracts--I went to bed last night after having decided that the reading was entirely incomprehensible. When I went back to it this morning, it made more sense, but it still takes a great deal more effort for me to understand than the rest of the reading. So far, it's really the only class where I feel like everything is in another language. What the hell is consideration? I'm not exactly sure.

Let Them Sleep

Weekend/holiday mornings remind me of one silver lining aspect to the cloud that comes with living among 40,000 undergrads: they like to sleep. In A2, you'll find a very peaceful atmosphere if you can rouse yourself before 9 or 10 on weekends. The regular traffic of adults driving in their cars...wherever they go...is essentially absent, and the same group that was shouting in the street the night before is fast asleep somewhere. Eh, I actually don't begrudge them their nightly street-fests...won't be long before the biting cold keeps them inside.

Speaking of the cold, I think it's rather telling that the school calls the semesters "fall" and "winter" rather than "fall" and "spring". Honesty is probably best in these situations, particularly for those who've never lived in a cold climate.

Breakfast is done, so it's off to get the work done. Goal: to finish both Property and Crim by 1pm. Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge!

Gah

I can say with full certainty that you are a complete and utter assclown if you play a David Gray cd from your front porch at full volume for all your neighbors to hear.

That is all.

I should be doing work right now

Today was the first Michigan football game of the season (v. Miami-Ohio, we won), and the first home game for which I’ve been in town. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be—definitely a lot of traffic, but most of it on foot since there’s hardly any parking near the stadium. As I walked to Zingerman’s and the farmers market late this morning, the air was thick with the smell of charcoal grills and sunscreen as people either lounged in lawn chairs in their yards or made their way to the stadium. I was actually surprised by the number of people I saw walking that direction as I headed to Kerrytown—damn, that’s a *long* walk.

As the title of this post suggest, I have work to do before Tuesday (first day of classes). The plan for today was/is to handle some of the outstanding home organization issues before tackling the reading for Legal Practice. I’ll definitely finish the LP reading tonight…I’m just not very far yet. Tomorrow I’ll hit Contracts and Property, leaving Crim for Monday. I have a writing assignment due in Contracts on Thursday, so I’ll probably start making overtures in that direction as well on Monday.

This town is really wonderful…really and truly. It feels more like a place where I belong than Houston ever did. There’s an ineffable quality to it that just resonates with me in a very real way, and I like that. No, I love it. Still, there are crummy parts, just like anywhere else. To live within walking distance of the law school (an absolute priority for me, given the utter lack of parking nearby), you have essentially two categories of apartments: crummy, and crummier. That’s not to say that the former doesn’t look quite spectacular once you put nice furniture inside, but it’s still old, weird, and the parking still sucks. No matter what you live in around this neighborhood, there’s the unfortunate problem of less-than-considerate undergrads. You know, I’ll bypass my need to mother people and totally suspend the urge to flip out at the fact that a large group of them are completely trashed on the first night of their orientation…I just want them to find another street to stand in and scream at each other in the middle of the night. Go home, kiddos, go home and scream there. Or better yet, cut the screaming to a loud bellow. I think a college town tends to carry a general tone of mild thoughtlessness—people play music in their cars *exceptionally* loud with the windows down, stomp up the stairs as if they kind of want to bash them in on the way up, etc. It’s not a huge deal, but there have been times this week when I’ve *really* missed the neighborhood demographics of my old apartment.

Few things are as sweet as a financial aid check in your mailbox. Especially when your September rent is already paid.

Let it be said that Firefox beats the pants off Opera six ways to Sunday. I’m also rather in love with my new wireless, optical mouse. It’s teeny, came with a little carrying pouch, and plugs straight into a USB—no drivers to mess with. Very cool.

Ahhrg….it’s nearly 10p, so I think the Legal Practice bell is tolling. Now I’m really wishing I hadn’t eaten all of the Twist and Shout from Zingerman’s this morning…I could really go for a bit of that heated up with some coffee while I rattle my way through the structure of our courts. Ah well, such is life.