I've been a very bad blogger.

I made some metal stuff and not very many beads. Dad says life is like a bar of soap in the bathtub. The faster you go after it and the harder you try to grasp it, the further away it gets from you. Some new glass colors and other necessary supplies are on their way to my bench so things haven’t been all bad. I just need to focus. FOCUS. This biological clock I’ve denied ever having is probably what’s making me want to nest anxiously rather than work. Not that I have any desire what-so-ever to fill my nest up with a bunch of shrieking, leaking cabbage heads. With my luck I’d spawn a serial killer. Or worse yet, a male Aquarius.

We’ve been cleaning out Mom’s garage and I found some of my old stuff. Nothing good. My report cards were interesting. I always did well the first 9 weeks or best case, the first semester. By the second semester there were many D’s to be found. Every year I went back with new resolve to make better grades but it was always the same story: I disliked school. The learning wasn’t so bad, except for the math and the majority of the other people.  The only grade in which I made consistent A’s and B’s was my senior year. I think it was because I knew I was about to be getting out of there, and it helped that I only had three classes at any given time thanks to vo-tech. I must have been so relieved to be free that I didn’t attend my 10 year high school reunion. My 20 year is coming up and I have no idea what I’m going to do about that yet.

nelson!

So how about a Nelson update? His eyes are turning more green. People are always asking about him – clients ask after him in private emails, even. My favorite neighbor asks about Nelson every time I see her. She says “Have you shipped him off yet?” I usually reply, “Can’t you hear me screaming his name in frustration every stinkin’ day all the way down the block?” Everyone knows about Nelson, so there’s no way I can rid myself of him without some explanation. He harked up his first hairball the other day. I brought home an area rug and ended up putting it in my office. It was only there a day before Nelson produced a teeny tiny hairball on it. It’s this fancy floral affair with several neutral colors so it blended right in. (the rug, not the hairball, har.) He seemed stunned by the tiny hairball, and then covered it up with imaginary dirt. At least he was being thoughtful.

nelson doesn’t mind the beads too much…

This cat, I tell you. He saunters around like he owns the joint, but he’s afraid of bubbles and the doorbell.  I see his point with the doorbell. It’s a terrible recording of Big Ben and it’s really loud and we can’t figure out how to turn the volume down. And there’s no telling who is ringing it if they haven’t been invited. These days, it’s Mr. Sarah’s dancing that frightens Nelson into hiding, and I can commiserate with that as well. See, if you want Nelson to stop the offending behavior, all you gotta do is JUST. START. DANCING. Today he was relaxing on the mantle, which is a serious no-no… I told him to get down and he just looked at me. I got closer and said GET DOWN and he kinda winked at me and turned one of his ears toward the window. So I pulled out the big guns and started singing “get down, get DOWN” and began flailing my arms around, awkward funky disco-style. Folks, you should have seen him GET DOWN. This may be just the thing to keep him out of the kitchen when we’re trying to cook, rather than locking him up. And us stupid humans can get some extra exercise.

But he loves the yo-yo, which could do far more damage to his tiny little peanut brain than tootsietoy bubbles or awkward dancing. (I’ve been referring to a walnut re: his brain size, but I’ve come to think I’ve been giving him too much credit.) He came running when he heard Mr. Sarah playing with the yo-yo, and this was the first time he’s ever seen the yo-yo. The very sound of its potential danger to cats drew him in. He watched it go up and down, up and down, and every time it descended he inched closer and stuck his paw out at it. As if that weren’t ”edge” enough, he loves to nap in my giant plastic bag full of smaller plastic bags.

I really wonder about this cat. Sometimes the Nelson situation reminds me of that Screamapillar episode on the Simpsons. The endangered Screamapillar takes up residence in the Simpsons’ backyard, and it becomes the Simpsons’ responsibility to keep it alive. Sounding familiar already, no? Considering its sexual attraction to fire and need of constant reassurance to stay alive, among many other obnoxious impossibilities, this task of preserving the Screamapillar proves to be very difficult. I mean, really. If Nelson wants to eat paper towels and foil and plastic flowers and nap inside a cloud of potential suffocation, far be it from me to disturb natural selection.

the only time Nelson is good

I’ve made his stripey ass an internet SENSATION and he still can’t be bothered to purr for me. Nope. My reward for all my skritchens and feedings and dotings is stolen baklava and chewed up steel wool if I forget to put it back into the drawer. We have this running joke of offering Nelson to every poor unsuspecting slob we meet, but the truth is we couldn’t bear to part with him. Once you give a pet a name like Nelson and then give him a nickname like Choochyface, the damn pet is there to stay.

And speaking of which, I just googled the Choochyface song – which is actually spelled chu-chi and is from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – and the song is sung by a couple who secretly despises each other. How’s that for Freudian? I thought it was from Mary Poppins for some reason, and I’m pretty sure there isn’t any despising going on in that movie unless I missed something really subtle. It’s happened; me, missing something subtle.

nelson! takes a bath – look at his pretty colors

Oh, and here is something I made for a custom order:

z-beads February 2013

 

z-beads, february 2013

I’ve slowly been working on a necklace. I think I said I’d post some jewelry on Etsy weeks ago, but I sold one of the pieces before I got the chance. And the other, I’ve been hung up on. That’s the problem (the only problem) with beads – even when you have way too many, you still don’t always have exactly the right beads for a project. You can either get happy with what you have, or go out and buy more. Buying more is always more fun. Mom and I often make an entire day of finding beads for one of her projects because that’s how she works. Me,  I just buy what I like and everything falls into place eventually, maybe years down the line.

I want to make bells, bells and more bells but I must get some glass stuff off the table first.

Thanks for checking in with me, sorry to be such a (busy) stranger!