Plus or Minus

We had a wee bit of a pregnancy scare last night.  But don't worry.  Everyone's fine, everyone's barren.  The stray cat I found at the liquor store is not pregnant.  Probably.  It's kind of hard to tell.  Speaking as someone with little to no experience with pregnancy of the feline or human variety (ok no experience whatsoever) I can't really tell if her behavior and outward symptoms mean that she's pregnant or just in heat. 

I'm leaning towards 'in heat' because 1) I really do not want a pile of slimy newborn kittens showing up on my floor one day and 2) she's been slithering around all evening making this 'murrowww' sound that seems to be cat-speak for 'DO ME'.  Either way, GROSS.  I will spare you (most of) the gory details, but I want to spread a little of this misery around by making it quite clear that engorged cat nipples are disgusting on so many levels (including but in no way limited to the sheer quantity of nipples, oh my god) that I can't even begin to describe how uncomfortable it makes me to pet Hadley right now.  This little hussy cannot get spayed quickly enough.

Hadley was supposed to get her lady parts excised last Friday (on the ominous 13th), but she had a chest cold thing going on so we pushed back the surgery.  Maybe that was a bad idea.  Is there an abortion cut-off for cats?  I tried looking up the legal precedent set in the landmark Meow vs. Wade case, but my iPhone literally punched me in the face for making such a weak pun.  And I mean literally in the most literal actual sense, not the 'I really mean "figuratively" but I am literally too dumb to understand the meaning of the word "literally"' sense.  It's amazing how sassy artificial intelligence is getting these days.  And my (antiquated, Luddite) iPhone doesn't even have Siri!

So clearly, I should have made 'writing about cats incessantly' one of my New Year's goals.  I would be spanking that so hard right now.

In other non-cat related news:

We are going to Sundance this weekend!  I demand a Ryan Gosling sighting, or I want my money back.  I have no idea if he's even going (because, you know, we talk, but the topic never seems to come up) but seriously?  How could you not love him in Lars and the Real Girl or Half Nelson?  And how could you not adore internet meme Ryan Gosling?  In my humble and totally unbiased opinion, Librarian Hey Girl is by far the best one.

This is my favorite iteration.  It's naughty. 

Source

And in case you are wondering and couldn't fill in the blanks sufficiently on your own, allow me to translate.  That is the Library of Congress call number for the book, The F Word, by Jesse Sheidlower.  See for yourself. 

While we're tossing around a celebrity encounter wish-list, I also wouldn't mind a Rashida Jones sighting.  She's in a Sundance film with Andy Samberg (who I ALSO wouldn't be disappointed to espy from afar!) called Celeste and Jesse Forever.  It looks really cute - we aren't seeing it at Sundance but I'm going to keep an eye out for it when it comes to theaters.  But I digress.  I've been toying with the probably terrible idea of cutting my hair, and Rashida has been frequenting my radar screen.  And by radar screen, I mean she's carved herself a nice little niche on my Pinterest, and I have a tiny little girl crush on her.  And her hair.

Is that totally stupid to hope that I see certain celebrities (or any recognizably famous person, really)?  Yes.  Yes it is stupid.  But also fun.  And it's a behavior that has been ingrained in my personality since the height of Zach Morris mania.  True story.  Once upon a time in 1993 or thereabouts, I saw a commercial for the Philadelphia Auto Show.  There might have been some cars there, or something, but all I cared about, and all I could think about for the next month, was Mark Paul Gosselaar.  He was going to be there signing autographs, and obviously he was going to fall in love with the creepy jail-bait 8 year old seeking his autograph and we would live happily, if scandalously, ever after.

Amazingly, my awesome mom took me and my then 6-year-old cousin Michael to the auto show and waited in a forever long line for an autograph.  Naturally, I had Zach Mr. Gosselaar sign a giant Saved by the Bell poster that came as a centerfold in some random teen magazine.  It was the best day of my life, and the day I retired my even-creepier 'Ernest Goes to Jail' Jim Varney poster (that I used to kiss every night before bed because why?) and replaced it with something slightly more age-appropriate.

I have no doubt that Sundance will be a slightly less pathetic but no less euphoric experience.