Hit the Dilly

I didn't sleep much last night. My cat was doing her Russian hat trick all over my face. I'm sure I've gone into this already, but the hat trick involves Ema sleeping partly on my pillow but mainly on my head, and curving her tail around my neck while purring double-time. Last night she was in particularly fine form. Ema would butt her forehead into mine, hard, and send herself into a fit of hiccups. When that subsided enough for her purring to kick-up again, she'd bat at my closed eyelids with her paws until I shifted my position, giving her an opportunity to try and burrow under the covers where she'd seek out my hands and rub her mouth on them, licking at me, trying to get me to stroke her. If I did, she'd begin kneading my stomach. If I didn't, she'd push her face part-way out of the blankets so that her ears were still covered, making her look like a psychotic little nun, and start in on my face again.

Thus, every time I opened my eyes, trying to gauge by the light outside how early it was, my vision was blocked by, I swear to god, an undulating wall of cat. And the situation was heartily exacerbated by my dog, since where Ema goes, Happy goes and pouts. At one point, half-asleep, I rolled over onto my side to escape Ema's attentions and found myself wedged up against 50 lbs. of solid, sullen dog bulk. Usually, Happy can't stand sleeping with me. I toss and turn; she sighs and leaves. But last night Ema's hat trick was so prolonged, so varied and intimate, that Happy had to stick it out beside me, albeit with her muzzle tucked down towards her chest so that her face was mashed into the mattress. See no evil, speak no evil.

Then there was the fan. I've sort of conditioned myself to need an electric fan on all night, all summer, pointed at the bed as I sleep. Or try to. It's an energy-wasting little habit I picked up in highschool, when the white noise was a way to avoid thinking and the constant coolness on my face made the covers warm by contrast. It made, it still makes, me feel like a hibernating ground squirrel. And that's one of the most soporific mammals one can feel like. Or so I've found. Personally.

But, Vancouver being what it is, the weather hasn't exactly been sweltering since summer began, so I have no excuse, even less than usual, for fan-abusing. But still I need the noise and the cool air, or think I do, so I leave the fan on and freeze my ass off.

So: bad night for sleep. Good night for lying awake between cat and dog, thinking about Saturna (where I could have gone outside and rolled around on the sandstone rocks, for a change), trying to get the Totoro theme song out of my head, feeling peckish, and wondering what being a full-time creative writing major will be like. And Marian turned 24 yesterday. Does that mean, is it at all possible, that in the fall I'll turn 24? And does it follow that a year after that, I'll be 25?! Because that is awesome. I mean, mainly in the sense that it fills me with fucking awe. I think we can all agree that natural selection, despite all modern advancements, should have picked me off a long time ago. Possibly in grade three, at my peak of academic success.

I'll bet you didn't know that when I was eight, I was so good at the class rhyming game that they had to stop playing it? The teacher would say "One had a pear, one had a plum..." and the entire class would sit silently, waiting reverently (I imagine) for me to chime in with "One had a chair for her big fat bum!" or some similar gem of sparkling wit.

I'm still holding on to those glory days, folks. It all went straight to hell from there. Now git mama her pryin' stick.