Doctor Quinn Plays My Life, Episode 1

Because, really: who better?

Winter wonderland!

We got dumpins of snow Friday and Saturday – Joe was a grumpy disbeliever, but I knew we were going to get lots of snow and I was right. It’s pretty surreal outside. Everything is buried. The city still hasn’t recovered – schools and businesses are closed tomorrow (Monday) still, some roads aren’t plowed, people still don’t have power, garbage pick-up is canceled, etc. Doesn’t bother me being stuck inside, but Joe and I have done our share of exploring and playing in the snow, too. Seb still does his business out-of-doors, you know.

Friday night around 10:30pm I wrapped up my camera in plastic bags and painter’s tape, snapped it onto the tripod and we went outside. There was only (only!) about 8-10 inches on the ground at that point and it was still coming down pretty hard. “Taking pictures” really consisted of putting down the tripod in random areas and hoping for the best. They turned out pretty nice, though. As we were walking down the alley behind our house, the power went out for the whole street. We ended up going home, warming up as best we could and watching Indiana Jones by candlelight until my laptop died (it may be in league with the Nazis to steal the Ark of the Covenant).

Saturday we got up, got dressed and went back outside. Joe thought to bring a yard stick (smart fella) and measured at various places – between 19 and 21 inches total. Not bad!! Seb bounded around the back yard a little, but mostly he followed Joe’s trails (me too…way less tiring).

It’s fun to be able to play in the snow or hole up inside if we want to, but I know this storm has been awful for a lot of people. Thank goodness we don’t have any emergencies that need attended to. We can just take it easy, snuggle and watch Law & Order. Hopefully the city gets back to functioning before too long. All the same, I’m not going to hold my breath over it…

Down another side street – power’s still on

Looking up the road behind us…

A snow plow passes by

Joe stands very, very still for the long shutter

Up a side street – snow, snow and snow.

Fence by the elementary school

Down our little alley

Our dark, lonely street after the power blew

Turns out, tea lights don’t provide much light at all.

We only had 4 candles, but they glowed up prettily.

Detail of the porch railing

19 inches!

WOOOOOOO SNOW!

If one’s legs are short, the snow is quite high.

Seb leaps across the yard!

Let’s play, guys!

Uh oh…he’s going down…

Joe? Joe?!

Well. That was dumb.

WHEEEEEEEEEEE

Yep. Pretty dumb.

Wanna play? Do ya? Do ya??

I’m tired; let’s snuggle.

The big tree in the front yard.

Front stairs

What leaves remain collect their share of snow…

Verdict: Awesome.

I’ve long held the opinion that Joe and I are one of the coolest, bestest couples around. When me and him hooked up, the sun shone a little brighter, the birds sang a little louder, the world just got better all around. I know, I know, as one half of this power duo I’m probably biased about how cool we are, but I’m pretty sure it’s a scientific fact. It’s not bragging if it’s true, you know?

Anyway, I’ve known it for a long time, but in case we have any doubters out there I have something that I think will change your mind.

mmmmm! sloppy, meaty goodness!

Midnight Manwich. I think that’s all I need to say.

What We Do When We Are Unemployed

We read. Constantly.

We goof around.

We TRY to nap but the STUPID HUMANS won’t LEAVE ME ALONE.

We vie for attention. (And watch Law & Order.)

…Seriously. Do you want to die?

We strike poses that should be embroidered on pillows.

We keep our humans in check.

(Actually, I’m pretty sure being annoying is Josie’s full-time job.)

Laundrystravaganza

I think I’m finally beginning to take hold of my Tetris addiction. My shoulder doesn’t feel sore when I play anymore. See, that’s totally proof that I’m not really addicted at all. I can quit at any time. But I choose not to. I play Tetris! Tetris doesn’t play me!

Joe, on the other hand, may be reaching the limits of his patience. Sooner or later he’s going to get mad enough to cut me off. I have visions of myself stomping around the apartment, ripping out chunks of my hair, breaking things, screaming, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY TETRIS I NEED MY TETRIS WHERE HAVE YOU TAKEN TETRIS CAN YOU HEAR ME TETRIS TETRIS TETRIS TEEEEEEEETTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!”

I can’t tell you how many conversations we’ve had that go like this:

Joe asks a question or asks me to help him with something or makes a comment that I ought to respond to.

Me (playing Tetris): Uh huh. Ummm…yeah.

Joe: (sigh)

Me (ten minutes later): OK, what did you need?

Obviously, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had that conversation because I’ve been too busy playing Tetris to pay attention to my poor, maligned boyfriend. Sometimes I’ll even answer him and then ten minutes later when I come out of my coma I’ll have to ask him what I said and amend it to something that makes actual sense. You know, Tetris never gets mad at me for ignoring it…

Anyway, to demonstrate that I am not yet a total waste of a human being, Joe and I ran errands last night and I barely played Tetris at all the whole evening. We mailed packages, we bought animal food, we had dinner, we went grocery shopping (and we really must be getting good at it because we spent about $100 less than I expected and got a TON of food!), we did our laundry.

I won’t disclose how long it’s been since we washed our clothes, linens, etc. Suffice to say it had been awhile. So there was plenty to do:

In case you can’t see, that’s two IKEA bags, one blue garbage bag, a mesh laundry bag and our laundry hamper, plus two very horrified/fascinated pets.

We took over the laundromat:

Why, yes, those are five industrial-sized washing machines filled with our things!

(I played some Tetris while we waited for the laundry to finish. Which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do! Don’t judge me!)

It sort of sucked at the time, but it was so nice to come home and sleep on clean sheets and put on clean pants today. Turns out, having clean laundry is pretty neat. Huh. I’ll have to remember that for next time…

Tetris Anonymous

Friends, I have a problem. With no job to fill my days and weigh down my heart, I turned at first to happy things: snuggling with Josie, kissing Seb’s sweet face, watching Survivor with Joe (Russell was robbed!), baking chocolaty snacks. I also started playing Tetris, which at first was a very happy thing but has turned into a compulsion. An addiction, even.

I play Tetris on my phone constantly. I play Tetris on the computer while the phone charges. Even when I take a step away from both of them and try to read a book, I play mental Tetris in the line breaks. I even have a sore shoulder, which I’m attributing to being hunched over my phone/computer playing Tetris. It’s madness, I tell you!

(I have gotten extremely good at Tetris, though. Not to brag or anything but I am the Tetris Tzar, the Baroness of Blocks, a Spectacle of Spatial Manipulation…! Is there a pro Tetris league that I can get involved in, because I’d much rather do that than continue to search for a job. Jobs only get in the way of my training.)

I think that poor Joe is beginning to suspect my affair. I fear he will turn to Josie in his time of need (I’d like to see her play Tetris – HA!) and their already cozy relationship will become a wall of blocks, impenetrable even to a Master such as myself, and I will find myself alone, homeless, catless, boyfriendless, with only my Tetris for company…

...Too late.

Seriously, though: what a wicked awesome game!

Josie says, Get a job! I'm sick of lookin' at yer face.

Go ahead…make my dog.

So yesterday I got fired from my shitty, soul-sucking job that I hated. Today to celebrate, Joe and I went downtown (that’s dahntahn in Pittsburghese) to run a few errands and have lunch. Where did we eat? Why, Franktuary, of course!

And on the seventh day...

Franktuary is an awesome little hot dog shop in the basement of a church. It’s where all the cool kids go to eat ‘dogs in the middle of their hip, downtown days. When I was in college, this place was all the rage among my classmates and I because it was started by two young people – just like us! Proof that we could do something with our lives! Proof that life-after-college didn’t have to suck!

Joe had never been to Franktuary so it was fun to share the experience with him. He’s a committed fan of D’s Dogs up in Regent Square, but I think he liked Franktuary just fine, too. Dare I say more…?

Between us we got a Detroit dog, a Texan dog and a Chicago Impostor dog, all delicious. Next time I definitely want the Pittsburgh dog (pierogies and slaw – hello!), but I was happy with our choices. The Chicago Impostor is something I probably would never have ordered on my own, but it ended up being pretty yummy. There I go with my closed mind again…sigh.

Detroit: chili, onions, yellow mustard

Chicago Impostor - yellow mustard, relish, onion, banana pepper, celery salt, tomato, pickle spear

Texan - chili, cheddar cheese, jalapenos

A really good hot dog with yummy toppings, not to mention a Boylan’s black cherry soda (and, oh yeah, the company), makes for a great afternoon.

A reason to smile!

Gobbling in an unladylike manner...?

Of course the problem with such a nice afternoon is that it eventually has to end. But at least I didn’t have to return to the office afterwards – YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I miss you already, Detroit Dog!

My sweet new ink…

I decided a long time ago that I wanted to mark the completion of my MFA (have I mentioned I have a Master’s degree?) with something really awesome, like a new tattoo. Generally speaking, I think tattoos are a great way to mark a milestone – like a living scrapbook. Sure, you can save pictures and such, but there’s always a chance you’ll lose your stuff. Your skin, your body, you’ll always have that.

As I continue on my slow journey to embrace the whats and the hows of my body, this becomes even more relevant. When I got my first tattoo I felt (maybe for the first time) beautiful – not “beautiful, but…” as is usually the case, but beautiful. There’s something indescribable that comes with the physical transformation of getting tattooed, something that the needle cultivates into a bloom. It’s easy to see how people get “addicted” – I certainly can’t claim to be immune.

So I did it again last night. The design is one I first saw on Threadless and fell immediately in love with it. I’ve carried it around with me for a long time…and now I’ll carry it around with me a while longer, in a more concrete sense. For me the feather harkens back to writing with a quill and the birds bursting forth from the feather…what better metaphor for creation? What better milestone with my MFA?

I had it done by a great guy named Joe Capone at South Side Tattoo and the whole experience was wonderful, start to finish. It hardly hurt at all and Joe finished it up in a little under an hour. My Joe came along, too, and was absurdly jealous. I’m pretty excited for the day when it’s his turn to sit in the chair and I get to watch. One thing that stinks about getting tattooed on your back is you can’t watch the image coming to life.

So here I am, sporting something new. A little sore today, but certainly worth it. Already itching for the next…

Absolutely nothing to fear!

So last night, being full of pomp and bravado after having received my DIPLOMA in the mail (I have a Masters degree, you know), I decided to suck up my life-long fear of all things scary and watch Paranormal Activity, which you may recall was recently marketed as, like, the most horrifying horror movie ever made. The other women I share office space with both watched it recently and they wouldn’t stop talking about it, so I figured, hey…I’ve already heard about all the scary parts, how much more scary can they be to watch?

The answer, you may be shocked to know, is “a lot more.” I was scared out of my mind. Heart racing, sweaty palms scared. “Oh, Cate,” you might be thinking, “you’re a huge weenie, your fear means nothing to me.” Well, Joe’s a brave brawny dude and he was scared too, so…there.

After the movie was over, I comforted myself by making a list of all the reasons why demonic possession could never happen to us in the apartment.To be honest, it made me feel a lot better. I even slept with the lights off!

And so, here is Cate’s Do Not Fear Demonic Possession list:

1. None of the doors in our apartment slam. At all. They just sort of ease shut with a little whuff. Even the closet door doesn’t slam. Demons (apparently) love to slam doors, so I imagine that would annoy it enough to leave.
2. Expanding on #1, this place is so shoddily built I think even a low-ranked demon would find it insulting to get stuck here.
3. Creaky floors? Big deal. Everything in this building creaks. If there even was a demon, how would we know?
4. Joe and I are extremely heavy sleepers. It would have to be an elephant demon to make enough noise stomping around the wake us up. And even then, I’m doubtful.
5. We don’t live in a gorgeous, enormous house in sunny southern California with a pool and a huge TV and the comfiest couch in the universe. Heck, if I was a demon I would have haunted Katie and Micah, too. I’d haunt them anyway, if they weren’t dead and all.
6. Katie’s haunting/possession started when she was 8. I’m already 24. Definitely in the safe zone.
7. Joe’s not a total asshole who would treat me like I’m overreacting when I tell him not to antagonize the demon that experts have told me MIGHT KILL ME and he certainly wouldn’t completely ignore me when I scream and beg him to SERIOUSLY PLEASE LEAVE THE DEMON ALONE and he definitely wouldn’t approach it like some fun awesome game where he had to poke the demon with a pointy stick to show how big of a man he was even though we both knew IT WAS A SERIOUSLY BAD IDEA and he absolutely positively would not continue to film and threaten and challenge THE SCARY DEMON WHO I’M PRETTY SURE WANTS HIM TO DIE AND I’M ALMOST SYMPATHETIC BECAUSE HE’S BEING SUCH A GRADE-A DOUCHEBAG. RIGHT?!
8. Katie’s hair was just too shiny and gorgeous and amazing. That’s demon-taunting hair. I don’t have that problem, thank goodness.
9. Sebastian’s too much of a lover to let a demon come in and be a downer and cramp his style. Actually now that I think about it, Seb’s so fixated on being near Joe 24/7 that he’s sort of already possessing him. There’d be no room for a demon.
10. Josie. Let’s be real: any noisy, needy demon that came in here would have to be louder and more in-your-face than Josie to have any effect on our lives. Can you even imagine? Even if a demon tried to out-Josie Josie, she’d just up her game and take it to another, even more obnoxious level. Frankly, I don’t think the demon would have a chance. He would stomp away defeated and depressed and probably just decide to retire.

See? We’re in no danger at all.

Just call me MASTER!

So, it’s official. I am, officially, an official Master of Fine Arts. Officially.

And here's proof!