Cat:
We dub thee Napolean Underfoot.

Dear friends & family,

After over a year of discussion and careful consideration, we went to the Oregon Humane Society yesterday and spent the afternoon. We took several cats to the visiting room, but finally took home an 9-year-old orange tabby who spent the entire time in the room shuffling between our two laps. He's medium size (a little chubby at 12 pounds) and wonderfully easy going. So far, he's been a dream: he won't jump up on things unless invited, hasn't offered to scratch the furniture and has even demonstrated the ability to sleep on the bed without taking up the entire middle of it. His shelter name was Cosmo, but since he doesn't respond to this, we would like to change it. Any suggestions?

Hugely happy,
Kat

I just sent in my acceptance of a job offer from my first choice CPA firm here in Portland. I'll start sometime in early January of 2008. Yay! No recruiting season for me!

Also, my boss hired my boyfriend (to do computer stuff) and his sister (to do stocking) yesterday. Nepotism in small businesses: it's a beautiful thing. Of course, there is the potential wrinkle that we now not only live together in a tiny apartment but will be working together in a small business. Anyone out there have advice on working in the same place as your sweetie? We're the third couple to both be working there (and there are 13 people in the entire enterprise) so there's already a precedent, but I'm curious to hear about other people's experiences.

Last night, I was one of the crowd. I got in line at 11 with my boyfriend and his mother and his sister, and we returned to his parents' house at 2 am with our four copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We read through the night. I finished about 8 am. Was I satisfied? Pretty much, yeah. Did you do the crazy thing and read all night too?

It has come to recently come to my attention that I have not been sufficiently clear about my sexual orientation: therefore let it be known that while I am certainly not straight, I am not 100% gay. To recap: the gender identity of my romantic interests is variable.

Further points of clarification may follow.

As you have no doubt noticed, I am not actively using this blog as a public (or friends-only) forum. Check out my user info for details.

It had not occurred to me whole potatoes could be grated until I saw Silas do it one night a few weeks ago. I was awed, and I immediately grasped that potatoes, like cheese, are different when bought whole and when bought shredded and frozen. I determined, then and there, that I would make hash browns at home.

I started with butter. I had never used butter for anything but baking or popcorn, and the pleasure of seeing and smelling it melt in a cast iron frying pan took me by surprise. If you too grew up in a home where butter was a frowned-upon decadence, and Saturated Fat and Lying were equal in the canon of sins, do yourself a favor and borrow a tablespoon or two from a neighbor. The delight of melting it on the stove top, pan sizzling, is better than eating gourmet ice cream from the carton.

I picked my potatoes with care, choosing a less starchy variety with a reliable flavor rather than a bland baker that might fry up crispier. A yukon gold potato is not much to look it. Its skin is lighter than your standard russet, a light tan with warm undertones, and the average specimen is medium sized and lumpy. The flesh is the color of white mashed potatoes whipped with margarine. Raw, it tastes and smells like a cross between cauliflower and the after rain scent of fresh earth. There is nothing in its complexion that hints at the glorious, delicate flavor revealed with cooking.

I added the grated potatoes to the butter on medium heat, and I stirred. At the suggestion of The Victory Garden Cookbook, which has lots of useful tips on veggies, but an unfortunate predilection for heavy cream, I added about a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. I can't explain it, but somehow, the vinegar taste disappeared and simultaneously magnified the flavors of both butter and potatoes.

When the scent of butter frying brought my housemate from the other end of the flat to investigate, and my pan suddenly looked less full, I knew it was time. I scooped out my treat, garnished it sparingly with good old Heinz ketchup, and ate myself a plate full of nirvana. Calorie for calorie, homemade hash browns are a more satisfying indulgence than chocolate.

Over the last two years, I have become deeply tangled in the strange world of the romance and women's erotica genres. At first, I thought this was a way to assuage the lack of first hand experience of romantic love or partnered sex in my life. This summer, it's become clear that what draws me to these books is something at once simpler and more complex.

The drive to understand how people work, what makes the gears inside humans go round, is one of the most powerful forces in my life. Almost from the first day I felt the compulsion to put pen to paper (9 January 1998), my writing reflects this. I wrote then, "I'm willing / to tear you apart / to find out what's inside / proper etiquette is telling me / that's not what I'm supposed to do." I have become a different person than the skinny, lonely seventh grader who scrawled that in her steno pad, but we share a common hunger: we are both ravenous to see the hidden workings. If I can't experience something for myself, I will question other people who have. If I find their answers inadequate against the mystery I am trying to unravel, I read.

Reading novels of romance and carnal passion started out as a way to explore what I wasn't seeing first hand and what delicate interviewing couldn't prompt my friends to reveal. It has certainly clarified my understanding of the once-opaque motivations that leads people to do the seemingly inexplicable for the sake of sex and love. Along the way, I have also garnered an abiding fascination with the romance industry and its unique business environment and an unexpected respect for writers who put their pens to the task of generating the romance-product that flows from many of the imprints distributed in your local grocery store.

As I have continued to read them, I have come to these books for more than vicarious orgasms and happy endings, and found more in them than a deeper understanding of human motivations. Romance and erotica function as modern myths, complete with archetypal figures and a certain cadence to the stories, a shape that they take, just as stories told by our primeval ancestors had a shape and distinct rhythm of their own. They don't have to reflect my values to resonate, and they don't have to be realistic to be true.

I read romance novels by the dozen because they satisfy my human need for stories that explain the things I cannot understand. I read them because they offer an allegorical balm for my gnawing questions about romance and sex and commitment. I read them because they offer a steadfast refrain: love happens.

Dear Readers,

I have had a crazy, wonderful summer. I received (and rejected) my first marriage proposal, helped plan a wedding, developed a social life, visited the church I ran away from two years ago, got intimately involved with a memoir, and moved out of my parents' dining room into an apartment of my own. My blogging hiatus lasted longer than I had planned, but it has given me some time to think about what I want from this journal. I have had some astounding, challenging conversations this summer, and one of the themes that emerged from those was this: I am good at getting to know people. I'm good at it because I want to be known myself, but here's the thing: I am terrible at letting people in, at being known. I can deflect like an Olympic goalie. This year, I want to change that, and I want this blog to be part of that. Writing is the skill I am most sure of in myself. It's the best tool in my toolbox, and I feel safest about the scary prospect of becoming known when I have the security of my gift for the written word in hand.

I'll be seeing you here again soon.

Kat

Undergoing livejournal hiatus. It may last through the middle of July, depending on net access during my upcoming summer travels and on the craziness of the next couple of weeks while I get the last of this quarter's school stuff taken care of.

This has been the week of belated comebacks.

Long time family friend: You should get out more Kat. Your social life is pathetic.
What I said: You're probably right.
What I wish I'd said: When you find a way for me to get out more without getting more migraines, I'll do as you suggest; until then, keep your shoulds to yourself.

Me: I've lost three weeks this term to migraines. May I have a four day extension on the term paper if I have a draft to you by the original deadline?
Professor: All health-related extensions must be processed through the distance ed department. You'll need to provide evidence to support of your claim.
What I said: Oh.
What I wish I'd said: D'oh! How very silly of me to forget that in Red Tape Land, all students with sad stories are procrastinating liars.

Disability Services Coordinator: In the future, you need to contact me AT THE BEGINNING of the term so we don't end up doing this last minute again.
What I said: I understand.
What I wish I'd said: Right, because obviously if I'd done that this term, we could have gotten a Crystal Ball Forecast and known in advance what my fundamentally unpredictable disability was going to do.

Why is it that I'm wittier after the fact?