See? I told you I was sick...

[desperance]

Indeed, I am not just sick, I am Sick. Injections and pills, thank you kindly. Whole new ways to feel sore, also light-headed.

Also, some villain hath tried to kick my door in. Unsuccessfully, but they have knocked the frame askew, which makes it actually quite hard to get in and out of the house, and harder to leave it locked securely behind me. Buggrit. Sometimes I love living here, out in the wild west end; sometimes - well, I just wish my bestseller would hurry up, y'know? Or my big lottery win. One or the other, I ain't proud. I just want a big house somewhere else.

Also, the aspidistra has been blasphemed, and you only get two guesses by whom.

I have had this aspidistra as long as I have lived in this house, which is just exactly eleven years now. It came to me as practically a monoleaf, a bare twiglet; now it is rampageous and triffidic, and we are the best of friends.

This summer I moved it out of the window, because its leaves were getting crispy and browned off even in the north light; I moved it into high Victorian gloom, on a top shelf where it could aspire towards the ceiling.

Barry also has aspirations, and one of them is to make it onto that top shelf; he likes height. His most recent discovery was that from the stereo speaker, if he stretched all the way up the bookshelves - and he is a very long and stretchy cat - he could just about hook his claws over the rim of the aspidistra-pot. And dangle, and try to haul himself up that way.

It is a heavy pot, but he is also a heavy cat; he has lead in his bones, he was remarkably heavy even when scrawny. He is no longer scrawny. And he puts all that weight on one side of the pot, it's hardly surprising, is it, that the pot tilts?

For a week, two weeks now he's been trying this on a daily basis, and then backing off fast when the tilting started. This morning - well, either he was too slow or too stubborn. Or too curious, I suppose. Whatever.

Big crash, Barry vanishes, pot on floor. In shards. So now I must repot the aspidistra, and I suppose find somewhere else to put it. Then I must hoover. If he comes anywhere near, I swear, I shall hoover the cat. And then, then, finally, I shall take my copy edit to town.

If I can get out of the door.

This has not been a good day.

And it's only half-past ten. In the morning.

Comments

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

Feel better soon. And Heh, at hoovering poor Barry. But really he's only doing his job. It's right there in paragraph 3, subsection C of cat-employment: cat shall whenever possible tip over, smash, chew on, root up or otherwise decimate any and all houseplants in cat's domain, especialy ones that are highly favored by cat's human.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

You are right, of course (and could substitute 'any old breakables' for 'houseplants' in above rubric, without wandering from its meaning or its truth). Though I'm not sure they count it as employment. Lifestyle choice, perhaps?