What's New, Silas?

Our cat, Silas is a brat - a big, orange-furred, basketball-esque brat. Silas operates under the conviction that everyone who sees him, loves him and that his charm will get him out of every scrape. 

Silas used to be right.

Kitty in a Nightcap. Image by Teece Aronin.

There are a lot of things Silas used to be - a baffled, innocent wisp of buff fluff, nestled in my cupped palms, for instance. As he grew older, he grew bolder and oranger, throwing his weight around with an "I've-been-on-the-planet-for-under-a-year-and-already-you're wrapped-around-my-little-polydactyl-thumb" kind of attitude. 

Silas didn't only grow older, bolder, and oranger; he grew bigger. His head outweighs most cats. He enjoys waiting until I've climbed into the shower to start pounding at the bathroom door. Because he's huge, I can't tell if he's clawing the door, battering the door with his head, or swinging a mallet at the door, because with Silas, all of those things would sound the same.

At the end of the day, he climbs into bed with me then jumps down a minute later. Then he’s back up, and then he jumps down. This happens half a dozen times while in between, I stroke his face and coo to him to lie down.

Once, by some miracle, I'm sleeping, and Silas is satisfied that I'm deep into the REM stage, he pussyfoots across the top of my pillow, stepping on my hair and pulling it hard until he reaches the nightstand. The nightstand is where my lip balm, ibuprofen, earrings, and water glass beckon to him like sirens on a tabletop shore.

"No, Silas," I mutter. "No, honey. Come here. Come here, Silas. Silas, leave those alone. Would you cut that OUT?  Silas, don't make me come over there. Silas, please! Silas, I mean it!" Ten minutes later, he's at it again, this time pausing to chew on the tag I'm afraid to cut off my pillow for fear of arrest. 

In the morning, I wake, exhausted. Silas is next to me, sleeping sprawled on his back. I dress for work. On my way out the door, I start the song "What's New, Pussycat" by Tom Jones with the CD player set to REPEAT TRACK. I wave toodles at him and slip out the door.  

I plan to work late that night.

We'll talk it over at bedtime.

Never Take "Bedadryl" Before Proofreading

Last week I wrote a blogpost, then proofread, and proofread, and proofread it again. When it “rinsed clear,” which is how I think of proofreading to the point of spotting no errors, I saved it as a draft and proofed it in preview mode which displays it as it will look once published. Then I pushed the publish button to send the essay hurtling into the blogosphere.

I know that even if something rinses clear, immediately publishing it is unwise if you can avoid it. It's best to wait a bit and then look at your work again, when you're fresher and not as emotionally attached. But that was the problem: I was too emotionally attached to wait and no longer fresh. Such conditions can only lead to premature ePublication. 

After I pushed the publish button, I read the piece on my actual webpage. I always do this because I find that proofing something that way reveals more things to tweak. I'm not sure why that is since the preview is essentially the same thing, but still, it just seems true for me. Then I quickly make what are usually minor fixes by this point, hit the update button, and the revised version instantly becomes what readers see. The problem is that spotting any error makes me think there might be others, so I proof it from my webpage one more time. Every time I fix something new, I go back and read again. Despite how it sounds, this process just takes a few minutes. When I proofed last week’s piece from the website, everything seemed fine. It rinsed clear. 

Now it was time for bed, but the light exposure from my computer monitor plus the tension from all that proofing, would probably jam up my sleep. So I swallowed a couple of well-known over-the-counter allergy meds. I won’t name the brand, but when my daughter was little, she used to call them BED-adryl. Then, to kill time until I felt sleepy, I read the post in bed from my phone - and spotted this:

Within days, our carpet was so buried under dried out henna-hued needles that it looked like the floor  of Donald Trump's barber.

Is it as obvious to you as it is to me - the extra space between floor and of? Oh, the humanity!

I sat bolt upright in bed and logged in to the Blogger app on my phone. Logging in took three tries because the "Bedadryl" was kicking in. I finally got in, closed up the space, then accidentally eliminated two spaces instead of one and had to put one back in. Then I fat-fingered while trying to tweak something else, which ironically was fine as it was, but could have been better and then mutilated a word which had to be tapped back in twice before my fogged-out brain cried, "Close enough!"

This is where OCD stepped up and said, "Whoa there, writer friend! Best to go back to square one and proof everything all over again because if you missed that extra space, God only knows what other horrific errors and typos are waiting to blind your readers! Actually, you can look that up! Get on that!"

Even my OCD had brain fog. It didn't mean that I could see how many people had been blinded by my errors; it just meant that I could see how many people had read the post: 205 so far. That many? It was after midnight, so maybe I appealed to other insomniacs, those who wished they hadn't thrown out their phone books. Or maybe they were reading me in Copenhagen where it was about 6 a.m. and time to kick off yet another happy day. Denmark ranked third in 2017 among the world's happiest countries. But who cared? What mattered was that things had to be made right - immediately. 

Propped up in bed, I started proofreading again, but kept dozing off, fumbling the phone, and making more typos. Then I tried sitting on the edge of the bed, nodded off, and was rudely awakened when the phone clattered on the hardwood floor. I thought standing might help, but all my concentration went toward not swaying. 

Then it occurred to me that this was a great time for cake. The refined sugar would perk me up long enough to finish my proofing. But I'd have to hop to after that because a crash would follow the rush, and there'd be no fixing my essay until about 10 a.m. That would be 4 p.m. in Copenhagen, where it would be dark and time for their afternoon bonfires. Those Danes would be warming their hands around the fire and discussing me: “That woman in the States writes error-laden essays. Best to avoid her work from now on."

So I ate some cake, sacrificing for my art, whizzed through the proofing and by 1:30 a.m. felt confident about the blog post. But I was wide awake and buzzing in my bed until almost lunchtime. 

But it wasn’t really all that late - I mean lunchtime in Copenhagen.