spring fever!

i have it. i'm so ready to bare these shockingly pale legs and steal daffodils from my neighbor's yard. in the past few days, i've been trying my damndest to make my life spring-y, even if mother nature doesn't want to cooperate with me (though today, i must say, was an exception). so i'm breaking out the pastel and floral dishware. i know it may look less rococo and more appropriate for a 6-year-old, but it cheers me up nonetheless.

today is my dad's birthday, and i have a german chocolate cake in the oven for him. it still has 10 minutes left to bake, but it smells sooooooo delicious. i'm almost ready to plunge my face into it...although i already did that with the leftover batter. (raw eggs don't scare me!) mmmmmmmmmm.

independent living

in just a few short weeks, the gritty little narcissus bulbs that a. planted for me have blossomed into these beauties. the blooms burst forth overnight, and their subtle fragrance is now wafting through my entire apartment. some of the clusters of flowers are hanging so heavy on their stems that they swing low and smack betsy in the face while she's eating. being a cat, and by definition nonchalant, she completely ignores them.

however, there are some different apartment inhabitants that she refuses to ignore. my worst nightmare: roaches. i am not a bastion of bravery or anything, but i'm not too bad with most bugs. spiders? no problem. i actually let them live most of the time because the eat roaches. even less common nasties, like earwigs, i can deal with. roaches are another story entirely. i get hit with a wave of nausea just thinking about them. but as i live in an old midtown apartment, they're unfortunately sort of inevitable. i keep my place clean, but that doesn't seem to matter to them. i'm more than willing to wage biological warfare against these pests with raid, but betsy is messing up this option. even when i cover up the defeated carcasses of my evil little enemies (waiting for a. to come dispose of their bodies), she finds a way in. and eats them. whole. at first i thought my kitty executioner was amusing, but now i'm afraid she's going to get poisoned. and i can't crush them, because i am a wimp. short of caulking every single crevice in my apartment, i don't know what to do. i guess i could grow a pair, but i'm just not ready for that kind of personal advancement. help?

sleeping on the job

today has not been so fun. i'm curled up in bed, eating my third egg sandwich in less than 24 hours (which may well be a personal record), hypothetically positioning myself at the foot of Vesuvius to write a paper for my art of Pompeii class. it's so so cold, and my bedspread is dirty, thanks to charlotte's habit of chewing nasty rawhides right on top of it. however, i have the best foot-warmers in the world to make this boring task a little less awful and a lot more cute. people who don't have animals really just don't know what they're missing. here are my bay-bays, catching up on their 19 hours of sleep a day while i slave away at the computer.

will you please check out charlotte's persecuted look? it is ridiculous. i guess she perfected it during her two years in puppy jail. this is the look i have to endure every single time i leave the apartment/shut the bathroom door/eat without giving her any scraps/let a. enter the apartment. you'd think i have been starving this dog or something. very conniving, she is.

cookies and kitties

the night before last i baked some gingerbread kitties, in honor of the ultimate real-life ginger kitty, the mayor. i've never made from-scratch gingerbread anything before, so these were a bit iffy. they needed some icing, or candy googly eyes, or something. a. suggested using them as cereal...probably the best way to deal with the 15 extra languishing on my counter right now.

the weather today was spectacularly beautiful. however, i spent the majority of my day asleep (i won't lie) or studying. sleeping was probably far more productive than the studying...intimidating tomes about contemporary art have to be the dryest, most humorless, and self-serious books of art scholarship on the market. it's enough to bore anyone to tears (or lull them back to sleep).

Once Again...

A new year, a new blog. It's a habit I've fallen into over the past several years. But I'm really going to try to give this baby a shot. Let's just hope it lasts longer (and is more inspired than) the sadly forgotten Global-A-Go-Go. Since I'm still partying like it's 1979 in my internet-free apartment, this might be somewhat difficult. But hey, what are neighbors for if not steal wireless from? (Yes, I realize that I just ended this sentence with a preposition. Really living on the edge here.)

I decided that this childhood photo is appropriate, since it externalizes the internal joy I feel every time I make/eat/see/think about cake.