transitionals

Housesitting the Awesome Kitties and the Jungle Puppy tonight and the cats have already made a great escape, sliding open the screen door with their claws while I was outside with the dog and sliding under the fence into the neighbor's garden. The quietness of the house made me suspicious especially after the clink of food in the bowls elicited no response and then the guy across the street came over to tell me that the cats were out running around.

Of course the little punks were sitting on the patio when I came back as if they'd been minding their own business all this time, giving me withering looks as I shooed one inside and the dog chased in the other. Cats have no conscience after all, and there's no way to make them feel guilty.

It's been almost a month straight of dog-walking and cat watching, which is nice for the change of scenery and thankfully I was able to escape to the lake for the day to read, nap under trees with the sound of the waves, and sing songs to my nephew when he cries because that's all he can do to express himself "I'm TEN WEEKS! and I don't know what I want...! He doubles in size every time I see him and it astounds me to see life grow like that, since I'm so used to seeing the decline rather than the ascent.

My little sister called me last night to see if I wanted to hang out, which never happens as our ideas of what's awesome to do on a weekend are a bit different, but she had a lot on her mind because one of her friends got murdered a couple weeks ago and her friends are moving to Portland and there's been other small frustrations that she needed to vent about over coffee in Coventry and a long Cleveland drive which I was more than happy to oblige because it's been awhile since I've done one, leaving Sonic Youth on repeat as we drove from west to east and back.

We ended the night at the Arabica I once haunted in my teens and early twenties when like most coffee establishments was full of subcultural souls and usually the guy working the counter was someone from your art class or something. It's now overrun with 14-year-olds who watch too much Jersey Shorechasing each other up the sidewalk, boys with cracking voices and girls in the shortest shorts I've ever seen tottering in high heels.

The motherly instincts I didn't know I had wanted to ask what they were doing out so late and why were they wearing that and where are their parents, but mostly for all the crazy that comes with knowing more of the world, I'm glad I'm not that age anymore, even though my Friday nights at that age involved trying to learn Soundgarden riffs and disappearing into my bedroom with a pile of CDs from the library and a stack of art supplies. It reminded me of the first weekend in Kent when fresh-faced freshman girls would go down to their first fraternity row college party and come back drunk with half their clothes gone. It probably starts earlier I guess, and with most things I seem to exemplify the exception rather than the rule.

And still, it's a Saturday night and I'm enjoying the solitude. It's been needed.

the couple next to you think you look strange...

When I worked at the zoo, people thought it was really funny to prank the receptionist with calls for "Miss Ellie Phant" and "Mr. Lion," and while no one pulled any Calvin and Hobbes style prank calls at my place of employment, I found myself trying to maintain sanity in dealing with a series of generally disagreeable people, and was so glad I cut class to go outside, wander up marble staircases to far more aesthetically pleasing biblioteca halls and marvel at the wonders of Norton Furniture as grown and sexy R&B played in the background. Surrealism of the rust belt at its finest.

As the art show was this weekend and the studio was closed, I came home and took a nap, planning to do some art later, but got a call from my creative partner in literal crime who said he was up for hanging out but not doing a whole lot and as I'm a slacker and it's the weekend, that sounded perfect. Besides, it had been awhile.

The last time we went out somewhere together, we ended up at a soul food restaurant in East Cleveland, where my general crackerness generated quite a few side-eyes of the what's she doing here stealing our men kind, and it turns out that he ran into the server at the club a few months ago and she remembered him because he came in with "that weird white girl "that one time (what gives Youtube? No Soul Coughing except in relation to cute puppies?). What can I say? I'm memorable and that's why I'm always "That Girl."

We got Lazizas at Holy Land Market and dinner at Latitude, which I've never been to before, and judging by some of the well-dressed clientele in fur coats and neo-Dynasty couture and hair, I was slightly underdressed for this scene with my black hoodie and Bad Brains t-shirt.

Everyone else seemed to be out on the town to see and be seen, looked and acted like extras out of tv shows I never watch, but we were so busy devouring perfectly herbed pizza with portobello mushrooms and basil pasta bake catching up on the last six months or so, talking art, music, life while observing our fellow diners from our perfect vantage point of a booth in the back with a view of the door.

The mating rituals of the upwardly mobile are fascinating. I'm not the most fashionable to be sure, but zebra print doesn't seem to look good on anyone. But the people watching highlight came courtesy of this one woman came in near the end of the night, making a dramatic appearance, throwing off her coat revealing an incredible electric blue cocktail dress with lots of feathers on it around the neck and bordering the hem, crazy high silver heels, and bearing an uncanny resemblance to one of my sister's Barbie dolls, but with a very loud and projecting voice like the cheerleader character in Daria. There were all these cameras set up around the table where she and her friends were eating and I couldn't tell if this was some kind of filming or if they were famous or what but it felt like being on the set of Friends or something. Priceless nonetheless.



We came back to my place and spaced out on the couch, drinking fruity Lebanese malts until we both felt tired, he went home, and I slept in super-late this morning, waking up only when I got a text about the Indians game downtown, wondering how I own no home team regalia but somehow have a Detroit Tigers shirt in my closet. I'm going to be a good public transportationista and walk to the Rapid station, get a cup of coffee and maybe some food at the market, see how the day takes me.