Laurie writes a blog

I use short stories to as writing craft exercises, a smaller space to try something new, like a new voice or narrative style.  That's what I wanted to do today.  As of 3 p.m., I've spent several hours struggling to get a grasp on the style I want to write this particular tattoo short story in.  The style I'm after is that of Tom's stream-of-consciousness Mental Chex Mixes.  See, the very idea of "stream-of-consciousness" is that it flows out naturally, that you can't "work" at it.

Or can I?  One of my strengths as a writer is the ability to change the style or voice I write in with different pieces.  Other extremely talented writers I know can't do that.  So I'm going to continue this challenge for a while more.

Jackie-cat spent two weeks recuperating from her surgery in my place.  She did great.  Ate her pills in their pill pockets like the treats they were, and was very sweet.  When I petted her in the recovery cage, she purred and rubbed her head on the bars of the cage, and rolled back and forth in bliss.  Last night, I left the cage door open, and she took the opportunity to have an explore around the place.  This was a good test of her sociability.  She didn't bolt or hide, just wandered about checking the place out.  Tumbleweed and Macaroon each had a hiss at her, but she wasn't much fazed.  She went back to the cage, her safe place (very briefly), any time she got nervous, then came right back out.  After about 20 minutes of easy exploring, with little visits back to the, she went back into her cage for a few minutes, kneaded her towel
and purred.

Here's a photo of Sodapop checking out her digs right about then, and through that I was sitting four feet away and could hear her purring and she was still kneading her towel.  She loooooves Sodapop.

 My two cats who hissed at her kept their distance as she came back out again to check out more of the place, but but she's wasn't afraid to walk near them.  Jackie's going to be great as a housecat.

Today, she went to the vet again to have the sutures from her eye surgery removed.  And I handed her off to feral cat feeder Jennie, who will be her temporary foster home for the next month.  She's too tame to go back to the street.

On the way home from the vet, I walked past the place where Jackie and her former colony used to feed till last fall.  The people who worked at this office fed them outside and inside their front door.  This is what's at the front door now.

Yes, the sign on the vacant office (put there by the property owner who never liked the idea of the previous occupants taking care of the colony) says DO NOT FEED THE CATS.  And yes, that's a cat dish on the ground at the right. 

That's what I texted cranky from the Jays/Phillies game that Cappy took me to in Toronto this afternoon (except with misspellings and inconsistent capitalization).  I know how the Phillies are doing most of the time because Cappy's a die-hard Phillies fan, but I've never followed the Blue Jays.  It's my city's team, though, so he insisted on getting me a retro Jays cap for today's event --his team playing "mine" while he's here on vacation.

Yes, I am the whitest chick on the planet.  I used lots of sunscreen.  Our seats weren't at close as at the Jays/Reds game, but I liked them better because the view from behind home plate on Thursday was quite foreshortened, and this time I could see the action a lot better.  The SkyDome (I refuse to call it the Rogers Centre because Rogers is evil) which is a 15-minute walk from my place, was open and it was almost 90F with the humidity.  We baked but good.  The Jays were put on the spit till they were done, too,  This isn't the final scoreboard, but that's how it ended up:  a 10-0 shellacking.

When a foul ball bounced into the Jays dugout, I thought it was a metaphor for their performance.  All the Jays in the dugout ducked and dodged it. Give me a break.

Cappy wasn't alone in the crowd, either.  Check out all the red in the stands,

I didn't have time to post this the other day, but before the Jays/Reds game on Thursday, we ticked off another Canadian tradition -- a meal at Swiss Chalet before the game.  Except Cappy didn't order rotisserie chicken (sacrilege!), he opted for chicken quesadillas.  This is the iconic Swiss Chalet meal:  quarter chicken dinner with fries.  When I gave him a taste of mine, he didn't even like the Chalet dipping sauce.  So sad.

On the way home today, he got another taste of Canada -- we stopped at a Tim Horton's donut shop.  Contrary again, he didn't get a donut, but a danish.  Clearly I have some work to do on him.

On the whole, I think we're doing well for not just an international, but an inter-league partnership.

Been having too much fun to post since Wednesday, I guess.  Here's a photo from one of mine and Cappy's adventures from earlier in the week -- taking Jackie the cat to the vet for her post-surgical checkup.  She was as good as any of my cats (and better than some) with the exception of a huge stress pee on the weigh scale right after I took her out of her carrier.  She hid behind the fan on the counter while we were waiting for the vet, but then let me cuddle her and hold her for all the pokey-proddy stuff. 

She's been very sweet and loves to be petted.  She purrs when petted in the cage, and rolls around and rubs her cheeks up against the bars, etc.  She did have another big stress pee when I wrapped a towel around her and brought her into the living room to sit with us on the couch one evening, so there's still some socialization to do.  The red couch of fabulousness missed the hit, luckily, and all the pee went down my shirt and leg and into my slipper. 

Thursday was my first ever baseball game, with tickets from a lawyer my office uses for great seats to watch the Reds beat the Jays.  Here was our vantage point:

Row 18 behind home plate. 

And look, they opened the dome!  Here it is, in progress.

 

I had a lot of fun.  What cracked me up were the 10-year olds behind us who trash-talked every player on both teams like it was their paid job.  But they also had encyclopedic baseball knowledge, just like I imagine Cappy did at that age. Cappy was still working the strategy around the sacrifice bunt when I heard the one kid behind us explaining it to his friend.  Anyway, I had a blast and I'm all ready to do it again today as Cappy treats me to Phillies vs. Jays.  He's in his Phillies cap (and yes, he does know how to wear it properly, M------l and cranky), and he's going to get me a retro Jays cap.  Yes, there will be pictures.

I'm out of time to continue this post, since it's nearly time to leave for the game.  Catch you later, after the Jays beat the Phillies yet again.  

First the news.  Finally, it can be told.  I've been sitting on this because it's been in the works since early April at least, but now we're down to the short strokes, and I announced it publicly at the reading last night for the first time, so...

I'm about to sign a contract for the film rights to Godblog with an independent Canadian production company.

Can I get a YAY?  The screenwriter who'll be adapting the book is a friend of mine, and he has my trust.  He brought this producer into the project, and will be a co-producer himself.  We've already talked a little about creative direction, because some things will have to be changed for a film, and I'm not alarmed by anything they're thinking about.  In fact, I even gave them some ideas for changes.

Film development takes time, so "when is it going to be shot?" and "when can I see it?" are not questions for now.  Not every film that starts development gets made.  So for now, I'm just celebrating the fact that there's an option on the book, that lets them start developing a script and looking for funding, and I get a fee it.  But mostly, I'm jazzed about the idea that there are people out there who are so enthusiastic about my work, that they are now putting their professional time and energy into it. 

Now, the reading.  It was great.  Small, iconic Toronto independent bookstore with a 30-year history, and 20-some people on folding chairs filled it.  Despite the credentials of the other authors, at least half the audience was from my invite list. I read first. 

Michael Wex did an amazing performance, not a reading because he did it from memory, sort of a beat-poet thing on Yiddish that was hilarious.  Mark Leiren-Young read from his book Never Shoot a Stampede Queen, and was hugely funny, too.

Here's me and Mark, who had also introduced me as a "superhero" in my day job protecting screenwriters and "fantastic" person and mentioned my cat rescues and everything.

And here's the piece of cake I had with Mark and his girlfriend at about 10:45 p.m., after the whole dealio. 

This was my first food since a few carrots at about 4 p.m.  I didn't get home till after midnight.  This week has been such a whirlwind with chores and cats and obligations and all and my mind is still going 90 miles a minute with all I have to still do before getting on a plane tomorrow.  But last night was huge, huge fun.

 

 

I dropped Jackie the feral cat off at the vet on Monday to have her ruptured abcess cleaned up.  Apparently she was so sweet and docile at the vets' that they didn't even need to sedate her to clean it up.

But while she was there, they discovered that her blind eye (blind since she was a kitten--she's now 5 or 6) was ulcerated and under a lot of pressure and swollen to the point that her eyelids didn't properly cover it.  So it needed to be removed.  She had her surgery yesterday and will be coming back to my place tonight for 2-3 weeks recovery. 

But best of all, she's proven to be social enough, and the vet so taken with her, that they don't want her to go back out onto the street.  They're looking for a place that will foster her after recovery, and if one isn't found by the end of the three weeks, Jennie, one of the Distillery District feeders, has a temporary indoor place lined up for her.  The vet clinic might even foster her in the clinic, where they often have foster kittens and cats about the place, and people adopt them right out of there. 

I forgot to mention in the previous post, that when Jackie was with her previous colony, a short distance away from the Distillery District, the colony caretakers had a report that she had been hit by a car in 2007 and assumed she was dead.  She reappeared in December 2007, perfectly fine.  So she's had quite a story so far, and now it looks like a happily ever after, too.

This weekend I'm trying to write, since I won't be writing the next two weekends.  I also did cat trapping last night (see post below) and am trying to pick off chore after household chore on my to-do list.  There is a Perfect (and I do mean Perfect) Storm of a social whirl on my calendar coming up, to wit:

• my major author appearance on Wednesday, reading from Godblog, for which I still haven't settled on the scene(s) I'm going to read and my peeps have been generally uninspired to suggest any, even for a prize
• weekend at the Chicago Squee-Up, where Cappy and I will rendezvous, of course, along with the other peeps
• Cappy coming back from Chicago with me to spend a week here, leaving on the 28th.  (We actually get to fly together for the first time.)

So while I'm prepping to travel, and cleaning up to have company, and keep up with other cat and personal commitments, I'm still trying to keep momentum on my immediate missing kid novel project, which I want to have a largish contiguous chunk of for my mid-July writer's retreat.

I did 800 words yesterday, and am very proud of the fact that the last hundred came after midnight.  Yes, I went back to it after the cat trapping high, and a bunch of futzing around online, not concentrating through the latter part of the evening.  Good for me.

I'd like to do 1,000 words today before 3 p.m., when I'm meeting Patricia at a coffee shop.  I have about 900 to go.  Gah.

Here's an FSotD from yesterday, and one from today already (jumping the gun a little, I know).

In the current social climate, the latte had now replaced the bottle of scotch in the desk drawer, and even better, could be openly flaunted.

 

“Winsome’s never wrong,” Margaret said, proving again that everyone our office assistant met gave her the kind of loyalty one usually only commanded with a hard drive full of blackmail photos.

Have a great Sunday!

 

I went cat trapping tonight for the first time in many weeks.  We were after a cat in the Distillery District, who used to be part of another nearby colony.  She was first trapped in fall, 2006 under terrible circumstances, by a minion of an evil condo corp that wanted the colony cats removed and destroyed.  The plan was to dump them at the Humane Society, where, as ferals, they would have been put down.  Instead, the three cats trapped tht first night had their return negotiated by their feeders at the time, and all three were was spayed by Annex Cat Rescue (who I volunteer with) and returned to their colony.

Last year I got asked to come check out a new cat at the Distillery District, where I'd helped trap cats and kittens as well.  Turns out it was Jackie, now feeding at a different spot, twice a day, with another very dedicated feeder.

This week, Jackie turned up with a big lump (dental abcess?) on her face.  She needed to see a vet, so we planned a trapping trip tonight, myself and Carolyn.  With her feeder there to help draw her in at her regular feeding time, she didn't take long to go into the trap.  Pretty good, when you know that that first time she was trapped, she was left in the trap for hours in the rain before she was retrieved,

If she looks a little rough there in the cage at my place, it's because A) she's been blind in her right eye since she was a kitten (she's five or six now), and b) the tip of her left ear was surgically removed to indicate she's a spayed feral.  That way, if she winds up somewhere else, or a similar looking cat turns up in the same area, there's no mixup as to who needs to be trapped for fixing.  The lump on her face is gone -- somehow it got scratched or sliced or burst open, so she still needs that checked out.

A successful trapping is always a rush.  This is only the second trapping I've done since late October when the Boxcar cats were relocated and the Eastern colony sort of faded out of sight when their feeders had to move.  I come home full of adrenaline and unable to settle down to anything except e-mailing and posting about it.  I miss the kitten-catching, too, because I had some truly awesome kitten-trapping moments, including a lot of bare- (or gloved-) handed grabs and one memorable occasion with three kittens trapped in five minutes, one by hand and two simultaneously in the same trap. 

I was so keyed up I forgot to feed my cats till 10 p.m.  Macaroon has just repaid my neglect by urfing her crunchies back up two minutes later onto the rug.  There goes the high...

Just for fun, because I recently received a grownup photo of one of my boxcar colony kitten rescues, I thought I'd do a then and now comparison.

Then:  at about six-weeks, living rough:

 

He's one of a trio that didn't get rescued till four months old, but socialized nicely, anyway.

And here's a portrait taken by his new family, age 3.

Look how refined!  He likes to sit on his mom's piano, even while it's being played (she plays professionally and teaches students in the home).  I've titled the photo "Oscar on piano" to keep it straight in my voluminous boxcar cat photo files, but his name actually became Meow Ming.

He also looks a LOT like my cat Sodapop (no relation).

It was for once warm enough, and not too windy to write up on the penthouse patio at my building today.  And bonus, I had it all to myself.  I spent several hours up there, with no internet connection, and felt productive.  So here's my FSotD:

My worry these days was that I’d find only one of Madison’s legs and would still have to keep looking for the other.

Tonight I think I'll go see Up at the movies as a reward.

Don't forget to weigh in on my Godblog contest!