partying with 2 cats, several chickens, Benji and Christi....

I was over at Christi's yesterday and Benji was back in town. These 2 are my most absolutely best pals, and both are heading off to warmer climes. Benji is passing through...he had lived here in Ithaca, but he is going back to New York city to officiate at a wedding (YES, the handsomist man alive performs weddings...not sure if he is a priest, voodoo doctor, lay minister or just plain minister or maybe even a ship's captain, but the state of NY says he has the power to officiate)and then, something like he goes to Florida to do something with the orange crop then New Orleans for Mardi Gras and then either Texas or New Mexico, one of those....
Christi, as I was saying last week, is an artist and illustrator and has a job for several weeks in THAILAND, which is like, 80 degrees and has monkeys and all the spicy green curry you could want to eat.
Christi lives in her own huge studio and gallery and farm...no veggies growing now, but lotsa chickens...



Benji is mainly a painter, his work on the right side below....






Mmmmm, Bowie...let's dance....

sometimes I have to steal my kisses from you.....

Many of you will be familiar with THE INCIDENT OF THE GLASSES last night. And YES, that would be a bit of duct tape up there holding things together until I get over to the optician today :)






Its not all skulls and gloomy glam goth pottery at my etsy shop you know. Dig these bowls and mug!




The wife LOVES this Ben Harper tune....sometimes I steal my kisses from her....

the wife's belly

Typical weekend. I tell the wife I am gonna take her picture with ginormous Spike here, and she is like "don't get my belly in there!". Kinda makes you want to look carefully, see if there is any belly showing.


My pal Kasey drew this picture of herself. The point is, skulls go well with any outfit, any mood, any beverage. You can go to my etsy gallery and buy the cups below, wicked cool aren't they?


You will remember that wonderful band The Human League from about 30 years ago. You have the hair mousse, the dippity doo, the dude wearing eyeliner and whatnot. As YOU KNOW my birthday is this spring, just a few short months away, and all I want is their greatest hits and/or DARE. let's check them out live, twice!
(good lord the 2 women singers are SO HAWT..you hear that they are still singing with the front man, who is doing his best to look as pretty as them...don't you love the glam-androgynous 1980s???)

back in the saddle, or drawer, again....

Spike is an enormous cat. Now that Emily cat has passed and he is the only feline, he has big cuddly shoes to fill, and since he is super sized, he does it admirably. He is sometimes too big for my lap when I am trying to type, but he STILL wants to help me blog, I kid you not, so our compromise is this: instead of sitting on the keyboard and playing with the computer mouse, I let him nap in the desk drawer. He is at my right elbow again, right now, snoring....

IN other news, we went out for the burrito and the matinee yesterday. It was snowy and crummy, and DANG, the cinema is toasty and comfy. We saw THE FIGHTER. Get this, we are watching it and it is like "HOLY CATS! Mickey O'Keefe is playing Mickey O'Keefe!". The trainer in the movie is played by the real life trainer. We lived in New Hampshire for ten years, about an hour's drive north of where the movie takes place, by a sweet little lake. We would be walking down the street with our dogs and sometimes we would bump into Mickey and his little dog Maggie. He had a vacation house by ours, and he would come up to read his book with the dog, get a little peace and quiet away from his stressful job as a cop. He would say "I work for the police and do a little training in the ring" and HOLY CATS, that is an understatement. He trained the welter weight world champ!!! AND THEN he gets to play himself in the movie? Wicked cool--he did a great job, totally genuine :)

AND lookit the 2 fine pairs of cups here, just listed at my etsy gallery---just exquisite and such a good price :)

lucky new year

Penny and Buster keep warm all winter by being all cuddly all day....and my rotton French sock monkey Georges Le Soq? Yesterday he is like, into the paper and sharpies and I say
"Georges! Big plans?" and he is like
"mon ami, zis snow sucks, January is, how you say, the WORST" and I am like
"the worst, except February is equally horrible" and he is like
"aaaaaaggggh! I am out of here" and he runs with his sign outside, thinking, I s'pose, of hitchinking to Key West...he was back inside in a brief minute.....


(get your Easter or Chinese New Year Gear with me: bunny teapot by Gary Rith now for sale at my etsy gallery) You hear that other cultures like Germany and Japan have piggy banks for the new year...I have those too, and more bunny stuff, at my etsy gallery...



You kinda figure you need MORE Paramore in your life, sounds so good...

tea party with Christi, Georges Le Soq, Kasey, Penny and ME, but NOT Benji

My best pals Benji and Christi
contact me and Ben is like
"I moved out of town this fall, but I am passing through, can we see ya? Christi is going to Thailand for several weeks too!" and I am like
"you got it, Georges Le Soq was just saying he was missing you guys" (Georges Le Soq being my rotton French sock monkey) and Ben is like
"No feckin' way am I gonna be in the same room as Georges, no way NO HOW". Which is a shame, really, but understandable. Georges is filthy (REAL dirt, he gets around), has bad manners and is lewd.
But Christi comes over, and Penny is all like "RUFF!"*
*gimme some chocolate!
and Georges must have had something besides tea because he, well.....

Anyway, Kasey painted Christi's kick ass little purse so she was with us in spirit, which you see below, C'est Fantastique!










I was digging Dieter yesterday, and oh yes, he had tons of material to inspire him, like Visage below (I remember those days!!!!)

wait till the wife sees THIS

I remember when my first pet died. I was so upset that even the next day I could not figure out how anybody ever got out of bed. Well, I got over it, and other pets have passed away since, and they have taught me a lot about life, death, dying and mourning. Our pets teach us a lot, don't they? Especially since each of ours has been worth a thousand million humans. Like (I think it was) Mark Twain said: "the more people I meet, the more I like my dog". Thanks for all the comments and notes yesterday, jeez! Here I am, poking at the computer, finding the few worthy humans that are as nice as a dog or cat :) Thanks to all of you.

I think the hardest part of our cat Emily's illness was saying goodbye. Trying to make her comfortable. Watching her physically take each step closer to death. And her attempts to be her usual sweet self and say goodbye. And, then, sorry to be morbid, taking her body out into the snow. It is so cold outside, and you have this cold and wet hole to put her into...jeez. As I say, our pets help us learn about death and mourning in a very direct way.
Anyhow, the pets had been very subdued in our house, but then suddenly spent the day more boisterous than I have ever seen them. A celebration of life. A couple of pics of that below.
OK, so the vet says "Penny has beautiful teeth, you have to brush them and keep them that way" which you don't really grow up expecting "One day I will be an adult and I will have to wrestle my beagle to the floor every day and brush her teeth". I do it just before a walk. She loves to walk outside, so I figure get that little unpleasantness out of the way....




These dudes have aperfect sound. I want to hang out with them, I want to go to their parties!!!!!

Emily kitty had 99 lives: 1994-2011

(Emily and me a few months ago)
The vet comes over early in December and warns me that our 16 year old cat Emily is facing possible kidney disease.
In September 1994 we had just moved from Chicago to Massachusetts to teach, with our old cat Sammy and little tan dog Petey, (both of whom lived very long and wonderful lives.) In our first week at the new school, a nice woman named Leslie who was married to another teacher, asked if we wanted to ride along to pick up their dog at the kennel. We got the dog, but there was a stray kitten there too. The kennel owner said she had been abandoned there and was a sweetie but a wild thing too. She immediately charmed Leslie, then me, then Maude. She was one of those cats who just loved affection and was very affectionate herself. We decided to get our Sammy a kitten, which at first he was like "I never wanted a kitten!". He had said that when we got a dog too. Sammy lived to 16 and a half (1990-2007)and so did Emily.
I say she had 99 lives and its true. Sammy died of the Chinese tainted pet food thing and Emily was very sick then too. But she recovered. Then when we got Spike cat 3 years ago, he had a cold, she caught it and she almost died of pneumonia, but she came back.

My theory of kittens was put into action with her, as you see above. She was not a Ragdoll cat, but in my hands, she was a rag doll. I figured a young kitten would get used to being held and played with upside down, etc, and it was true, although she only let ME play with her like that.
For most of her life she was very chubby, as you see above. In the last 4 weeks all the extra weight came off. Her coat was always beautiful though. Saturday morning she seemed a little sick but she still had a huge appetite. Yesterday morning, suddenly she would not eat or drink anything, and with our other pets next to her, she fell asleep and did not wake up.

She had been named for the wife's sister Emily, who had gotten a cat at about the same time and named her Maude. Maude cat died recently too.

You are always amazed at how loving a small, free, stray cat can be. It is humbling--all they want is to be with YOU. How can you ever live up to that? I have worked at home most of Emily's life, so you know we spent nearly every hour of her life together. What a great friend.


(pic above and below from a week or 2 ago--Emily with Spike and modeling for a mug design)

(mug that I made and painted of Emily just last week)

(next 2 pictures--Emily with Penny and Buster and Spike yesterday)

I wouldn't trust this guy....

1996, me, my stache, my stache on a mug I made.....
in other news, Alita tells me she made Penny a purple tutu and you can see she is tres excited!

badass tall teapot

(teapot by Gary Rith)
I am pretty excited about this thing, just made and fired. I talked about making it last week--a lot of pieces and parts. What am I doing, what is on my mind? Not sure, but something OVER THE TOP. I made another like it yesterday. I understand that we will have the Chinese year of the bunny next month. I made a ton of money a couple of Januarys ago with year of the pig. THEREFORE, I am wondering how I can paint badass bunnies onto black pots...and the usual cute ones too :)

old and new.....

The wife is poking through a cupboard and starts sorting this box she finds. A little time bomb! Catch the pic of me with the 'stache, doing my thing, 12-13 years ago. Had the stache from 1993-2003, its part facial hair, part something else creature, is it not?
Did you have your black eyed peas yesterday? Southern tradition, and the wife is from the south, requires black eyed peas and ham for good luck in the new year. We do hoppin' John, which is veggies, black eyed peas, rice, and in our case, soy based ham. We didn't have the ingredients and briefly wondered if a quick extra trip to the store was needed and realized that 2010 was pretty dang lucky, and we had eaten a boatload of hoppin' John, therefore, we ran to the store :)

2010: was it the Year of the Sock Monkey?

My rotton French sock monkey Georges Le Soq is there with the pencil and paper, looking intent. He has not been to bed yet, but at least he ran out of fireworks.
He is like
"mon ami, you Americans, always trying to improve yourselves. Always feeling guilty for zomething" and I am like
"It goes back to the Puritans. Americans grow up believing they always gotta be better, at least until they get a reality TV show."
Georges is like
"I vould be good on zees reality TV shows. But us French? We never feels guilty. We live, we love, we party, ees all good" and I am like
"Uh huh. Quite a party YOU had last night, eh Georges?" and he is like
"before I go to bed, I resolve, I guess, what zee internets all say Americans vill do, exercise more, then I be more sexy for zee ladies"......

Golly, I love this tune