Promiseland

[Fetian]

I'm both hoping that the other animals -- including Oz -- will like Cael better once he's fixed, and also that while he's recovering from surgery and less boisterous, Oz might be able to get to know him and come to like him some

[knightofcups]

I do wish there were an easier way to meet all the animals needs. I never expected to be in a situation where my pets had to adjust around other people’s animals, and so I never really put work into making that something they were good at. Which wasn’t fantastic foresight on my part, but also was reasonable for where I wast etc. Still, it frustrates me to not be able to do something more to facilitate coexistence.

I know there’s only so much that can reasonably be done, given the personalities and sheer /numbers/ of animals involved, but I continue to want to attempt stuff.

I know I’m prone to having dramatic negative reactions at what feels like pet criticism to me, but I also know this is just… what the thing is. Not ideal, but the outcome of something I didn’t expect or prep for, that can’t really be /changed/ just worked around as best as possible.

All that said, I’m hopeful Ivy-free nights might be useful.

I am glad you are here and wouldn’t have it any other way, but I wish I’d had forethought both in the general before, and when you first moved in, to approach stuff differently.

(Without beating myself up, b/c I don’t think this as a (wonderful) long-term arrangement was what anyone involved anticipated)

[Fetian]

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[Fetian]

Mocapped characters all look like ball-jointed dolls whose joints have come loose

[Fetian]

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[Fetian]

Finally finished Mouse and His Child last night, and I genuinely don't know how I feel about it. I think if I didn't have any attachment to the movie, I wouldn't have bothered finishing it, so I suppose the final verdict is that it's mediocre, except that I am glad to have read the ending and feel it would have been a shame to miss out on it, so the ending I guess gets a passing grade?

The movie was (and is!) hugely influential on me -- I watched it many a time as a child, it had a big effect on the stories I write and the way I write them, it probably gave me my first existential crisis. And the movie is largely very faithful to the book -- changes feel more like a final editing pass than anything else, tightening it up and streamlining it. There are a couple of bigger changes: a major goal for the protagonists is to become "self-winding" -- in the book this doesn't happen until the denouement, in the movie it happens at the beginning of the third act, and it also means something different. In the movie this functionally turns them into fully self-actualised individuals with control over their own actions --

Oh, uh, if you're unaware the titular Mouse and Child are wind-up toys

-- in the book being "self-winding" just means they're always wound, so always moving. This is not presented as the horror it might have been in a different story, they just patrol their "territory" eternally and then are grateful for a rest when their winding does eventually wind down again after all.

The other major change became apparent when I reached where the movie ends, in the book, and realised there were still thirty pages left. The book is 167 pages in total, so that's a pretty significant chunk of story to get cut, and I suppose it says something that the part of the book that just wasn't in the movie at all is the part that I actually enjoyed reading. I did always feel like the ending in the movie just kind of, happened, and wasn't super satisfied with the final scene, so.

It's also interesting to get more insight into the characters than you get in the movie -- the antagonist in particular, you get a lot into his head, and despite his villainous and theatrical monologues you just don't get that in the movie. He also gets not one, not two, but three full heel-turns in the remaining thirty pages, whereas in the movie he's just defeated and then we're done with him.

I've also also just realised that they pronounce Euterpe's name "You-turp" in the movie.

Anyway! Final verdict, the story is exactly the sort of thing I like, but the author's voice just does not jive with me. It was worth reading as a curiosity, but without the exact circumstances that made me the person I am now I wouldn't have bothered.

[Fetian]

For the record I also don't necessarily recommend the movie unless you have an interest in strange and mildly horrifying American-Japanese cartoons from the '70s. I do recommend it for children, but if you're an adult it probably isn't going to hold your attention, barring the circumstances in the first sentence

[Fetian]

Back from the emergency vet with Oz -- last night I noticed her pupils were dilating asymmetrically (the right staying a little more constricted than the left, but still reacting to light); also at the time her eye was watering and she was keeping it squinted, now it's just the dilation. Long story short of the visit is that she has a little scratch on her eye and now has to wear a cone and get eye drops put in her eye for a week. Hopefully at that point it's all cleared up, and she'll be healed and done, otherwise she'll need another examination.

She is very sad about the cone and I'm worried about her being able to drink from the water bowls while wearing it, but she has eaten some of my breakfast off my plate (consensually), so at least that's not going to be a problem. She has not eaten her own breakfast, yet, but I imagine that's stress more than anything.

Cael of course has no sympathy for her, but in four days he'll likely be wearing a cone of his own, so. We'll see how it likes it, then.

Very relieved that it's nothing too serious (touch wood), and the bill was a bit less than expected, too, "only" $484.

Obviously I didn't sleep much last night, so today is going to be a rest day and might have a nap in the middle of it, if the cats will let me.

[Fetian]

Did not in fact find time to nap, and also I have to give Oz the eye-drops every 12 hours, and need help to do it (I do not have enough hands to hold a cat still, hold its eye open, and squeeze medication into said eye, all at the same time), which means we need to schedule when to do the drops around ash's schedule, and he works for a living, so. I am waking up at 7 AM to medicate the cat. For a week.

Willing at all times to do absolutely anything for the baby, but it's not going to be fun for anyone involved. Plan is to just interrupt my sleep for 10 minutes and then go back to sleep, but we'll see how it goes. I can't rotate my schedule without throwing off the rest of the cats' routines, and I don't want to do that

[Fetian]

Today I carved a Jack O'Lantern!

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ash took the top picture, and also painted the little pumpkin on the right; I painted the pumpkin on the left, with the face, and also carved the big one. It's the first time I've carved a pumpkin since I was a child, so it was very exciting! I did the trick of putting some spices on the inside of the pumpkin, so when the candle warms it, it smells nice

I also mixed up the pumpkin remains (seeds, guts, &c) with some celery I had that was going off, and tossed that into my garden, to nutrienate the soil and feed the birds and what have you. I also also showered, and beyond that didn't do a whole lot with my day. I mean, gardening and carving and so on is a fair amount, but, you know. Nothing else to report

ash and I finished The Waste Lands a couple days ago, and ash was so into it that he asked me to immediately start reading him Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower IV), so we're reading that now. This one is considerably longer than Waste Lands, so I expect we'll take a break from it at some point, but in the meantime we're speeding through that one, too. We keep talking about Stephen King as a writer, and one thing that comes up is that he's honestly a much more skilled writer than people give him credit for -- he is very good at pacing, and also at writing more than two people having a conversation, and at descriptions. He has a set of character archetypes that he enjoys writing, and a kind of story that he enjoys telling, and people judge him very harshly for that, but I mean, the man knows what he's doing. (He does not, however, seem to know scale.)

Anyway, we're past Blaine, which is a shame, but was very fun to read, and we're now into the part that weaves The Stand into the universe more explicitly than it's been doing already, which I've been looking forward to getting to with ash, since he actually knows The Stand

Oz is doing alright -- she's taking the eye-drops more or less like a champ, and doing okay getting around with a cone on. She is sad she can't groom herself, and spends most of her time sleeping or staring off into space, but this is not super out of the ordinary for a cat. She and Cael also are mostly getting along, though I do frequently have to remind him to behave.

Speaking of Cael, we're having to loosen his collar about once a week, he is growing very fast.

Three days before we cut his balls off.

Okay! Gonna go chill. Ta