Ah Jarvenpa, and you non-commital millions following my (nearly non-existent) blog, you are quite right that i need to bestir myself. What a lazy blogger i turned out to be. First overwhelmed by the events in Palestine. Then lost again in the vast, yet compelling trivia of daily life. Yet writing should be nearly as easy as thinking shouldn't it? And I surely do that. So here goes. I shall try a new mode. More often, but short. And perhaps someday aspire to the the essays and profound observations Jarvenpa herself regularly creates with such easy grace.

The white pit bull - Zeus is his name - now lives downstairs, his owner and I having had a falling out. But he has left behind his sidekick, Gigantor, a minute female cat, barely out of kittenhood, who was raised with this Chenghiz Khan of a dog and lies there lazily as a mouth bigger than her entire body looms over her and a tongue longer than her length swashes over her. Gigantor is befuddled. She had only just gotten used to living in my apartment and is quite astonished that all "her people" have now vacated to the apartment below. Or maybe its mostly that i serve up Fancy Feast to any one who might like some about 9am every morning. And she has discovered, after a short life of nibbling Zeus's kibble remnants, that she does indeed like Fancy Feast. And several quiet hidden sleeping spots not subject to the sound of video game machine guns.
in fact I am quite appreciative of all the new found silence of my apartment myself - though i do miss Zeus. It all started one night when his owner - my former housemate's boyfriend, who had come with her when she returned to live in my spare room as the solution to a temporary housing crisis, returned from outside and encountered a skunk on my deck. The cornered skunk let loose, as cornered skunks do, and the boyfriend, after roaring by me to the shower with reeking dog in tow, was so put out that he couldn't stop roaring for hours - and would accept no apologies or explanations at all for the kibble i had left out that had drawn the skunks.
Sigh.
It was not violent in the end. But it was a glimpse of violence - of living with a man who is capable of such out of control emotion and it taught me a lot - mostly profound sympathy for the SO many who are trapped in such situations. We made up eventually. Mutual apologies passed by letter, and then grudging courtesies. But i asked him to leave and he gladly went. Fortunately the room below me opened up and made it easy for him to take girlfriend and dog and simply move out of my sight with no great hardship (he is unemployed and making him - and Zeus and Gigantor - homeless - was not a burden of conscience i wanted). The rent below is even less - since they are renting out the living room as well. The world's belt tightening all around me - but that is a topic for another blog.
Til soon, or sooner at least, i promise,
Ocean Lady