… here is the depressed penguin my student created. I can totally relate to this guy right now, especially on a snowy day.

Thanks so much to everyone who sent me warm thoughts during this tough time. I miss Bruce so much, but I know I did the right thing by putting him to sleep. A kitty as sweet as him shouldn’t have to suffer for a single minute of his life. I think everyone who met him loved him. Anyway, thanks.

This morning I went down to the animal hospital to visit Bruce. While I was there the test results came back for the fatal kitty disease, FIP. The results were positive. I spend a few hours hanging out with Bruce- petting him and holding him in my lap. Then Mike came and we went into a little room and they gave him an sedative injection that literally put him to sleep. He died in my hands, with Mike petting him. Bruce was a good cat. He was very loving and sweet. He loved to be held and carried around, and he snuggled like no other kitty I’ve known. I loved him and I’m so sad he died.

Bruce peed on the bed. Which is weird, cause he has never had an accident. Then, the next night, HE DID IT AGAIN!??! It was sort of weird cause he peed where he was sleeping, then just moved and kept cuddling. Combined with his lack of interest in food (Willow even got him some wet food) lately, we took him to the vet.
Bruce is sick. He has been in the kitty hospital for a few days. He does not have kitty AIDs or leukemia, but he was super dehydrated. They couldn’t get all the blood they needed for all the tests. He has some fluid (tinged with blood) in his belly, but they don’t know where it is coming from. Some of the test results came back a little abnormal, but they still don’t know what he has. The two things they think right now are a fatal disease called FID or something wrong but treatable (via surgery) with his liver. He’s in an isolation room and they are waiting to get more test results. We will know more on Monday.
Willow is a sad lady. :(

When I was in Denver I read the New York Times Magazine’s “Year in Ideas.” The idea that I keep thinking about is the one where they conducted a study about how talking shit together makes people friends. Basically they showed people a video of a man and a woman having an argument, and asked them to answer questions about their impressions of the characters. Then they offered to introduce them to people who shared either their negative or positive impressions of the the characters. Almost all of the participants were more interested in meeting people who disliked the same characters that they did. And then they went on to explain that in general people feel more connected with friends who share their negative opinions of mutual acquaintances. Talking Shit! It brings people together!
It’s funny because it’s true. I think back to any job, any class and I can pretty much identify the scapegoat- the weird dude that bugged everyone. Sometimes I was that weird dude. Singling that person out meant that everyone else got a little closer. It’s weird that people bond over that, rather than bonding because we all like this one really cool dude. Although I guess that happens too, like with Bobby Kennedy, but it’s rarer.
I can distinctly remember my first shit-talking sessions with almost all of my close friends. Over the internet with Allison Halter before we’d ever met each other or knew anything about each other’s lives. In the office with Julie, forced to whisper so that kids and colleagues and parents wouldn’t hear. It’s like you can’t trust fully someone until you’ve shared some dirt. I have friendships that are based entirely on talking shit.
I don’t think it’s bad. It’s not really harmful or malicious. I can complain about a coworker that the friends I’m with will never meet, and then be less annoyed by her the next day. I don’t talk shit about my friends- I’m fiercely loyal to everyone I love. But I can go on for hours about bad drivers, stupid talk show hosts, jerks from high school, or snooty waiters. And afterwards I feel great!
So basically we’re all assholes. Science proves it and the New York TImes makes it legit. Thank god. Because I fucking hate scientists and newspapers, don’t you?

Lately I’ve had the strange and pretty awesome opportunity to see myself represented on the canvas and the silver screen. By ‘canvas’ I mean plaque, and by ‘silver screen’ I mean HDTV.
First there was my mii:

Well, the big headed part is right.
Then Mike (thebestboyfriendthateverlived!!!) Merrill commissioned Ryan (thebestportlandsuperheroartistthateverlived!!!) Berkley to paint my portrait as The Rose City Wrangler, a character that Mike and I created. I mean discovered. Because she is real.

And finally, Mike’s obsession with managing a virtual WWE franchise gave rise to this buxom bombshell:
Let me just say that those were the smallest ta-tas available.
I am definitely most excited about the Wrangler, and she is hanging above my bookcase as I type this. But it’s weird that some programmer in a dungeon somewhere was able to come up with code that lets me make me (mii). Granted I can’t get the ta-tas perfect, but the likeness is close enough that people who come to play the wii can recognize my mii, and Liz, upon seeing the thumbnail image of my WWE character instantly recognized me.
Anyway, it’s fun and it feeds my vanity (just what the world needs). It’s like playing with dolls, only they’re cyber and they’re me. Whoa, man.

… with the pilot of Big Love. It’s about polygamist mormons in Utah. It’s good. I’m bad at blogging this weekend. All I have been able to think about this whole dumb weekend is the crappy parent situation at school. Ugh. I hate it when I let that stuff follow me home and hang around. At least there was Futsal tonight to take my mind off. Go team!
I’m bad at blogs today.
Stupid resolution.

I resisted the show for a long time, mostly because my mom loves it. But that’s dumb because Sports Night is one of my favorite series of all time, and I love Studio 60. I just never paid much attention to TWW. Turns out it’s pretty good. We still have like, 700 episodes to watch, but so far I like it.
That is all for Saturday.

Thank God It’s a Friday! (As my friend Allison would say!)
Wow. You know what part of my job I don’t like? The part where parents are mean to me/treat me like I am dumb. I can’t really go into much detail, you know, “just in case,” but man. I’ll take a kid with a bloody nose over an entitled parent any day of the week. Eeny day.
We are studying penguins in the 1st grade right now. Do not ask me why. It is a tradition at my school, I guess. Anyway, the kids had to make little penguin journals yesterday. They decorated the cover with a construction paper penguin- you know the type. Yellow beak, yellow feet, standing on an iceberg, maybe a little cross-eyed. Except for one awesome little boy. He made his penguin in profile with sort of hunched shoulders and a beak pointing down. Then he used a scrap of black paper to make a big cloud over the penguin’s head. And finally he punched some while holes and glued them down under the cloud, above the penguin. It looked like it should have a “that’s life” caption underneath. Or “What’s next? A leopard seal?” Or simply, “it ain’t easy.” I’ll post a picture of it soon. I effing love that penguin.
Finally, here is an emo exchange that I found on the Internet. I feel like a rubber necker!

Day two, what what!
The other night I went to a yoga class for the first time in over a year. I inadvertently ended up the beginner class, which is no big deal, except that my teacher was a beginner too. As in, this may have been his first class ever. He was from Venezuela and had a soothing, purring accent that was sort of hard to understand. He spent the first ten minutes of class talking about yoga. Then he led us in some warm ups that I’m fairly positive were rooted in jazz dance. For the rest of the hour he went back and forth between very very simple and very very advanced positions. He’d go from a mellow strech a la ‘Sit And Be Fit’ and then very gently instruct us to turn that posture upside-down, balance on one hand, and stick our heads between our legs- or something to that effect. When he came around and saw I was having trouble, he purred “yes, this pose can be uncomfortable.” I think he basically taught us his own daily yoga routine, but tried to dumb it down for us dummies.
BTW, OMG! TGIF! I mean, TGITh. Cuz I definitely wrote this on Thursday. Yessiree.

Mike and I watched a few minutes of the Andy Milanakis (sp?) show tonight. It was very funny. In one bit Andy was wore a giant cardboard suit and shouted at people on Wall Street to “get back to work!” He “wasn’t paying [them] to to eat cereal and walk around all day!” He asked them for the time and then told them that it was not three o’clock but rather “CRUNCH TIME!!!” It was hilarious, but also very very sad. Because you see, Andy was actually shouting at me through the Mac Mini. That’s right, my days of eating cereal and walking around are over. I went back to work yesterday.
Luckily it was a planning day, which meant a quick trip to the work room to grab some metal brads turned into a loop of pleasantries and idle gossip exchanged at every classroom I passed. Took about an hour. Never found those brads, though. Still once I hunkered down in my room I got a lot done. I moved my professional texts from a cupboard to a prominent shelf beside my desk to show my room parents (and myself) that I got some facts to back me up. I got some information! A little pretentious maybe, but it makes me feel good. Maybe next week I’ll frame my Masters Degree and hang it above Number Corner. That’d show ’em! Ugh.
Today the kids came back. I expected them to be Hyper 2 the Xtreme!!!- bursting with stories of vacations and visits from Santa. Instead I had 22 zombies who had spent the past two weeks sleeping until noon and playing video games. Like me! They were not quite ready for that 7:50 Morning Meeting. Let’s just say that there was a lot of spontaneous lying down on the floor today. By me. I mean, by them. I’m sure tomorrow they’ll be back Full Throttle to the Maxx!!!, but today I was grateful for my little zoned out brain eaters. They look pretty cute when they’re sleepwalking.