juushika

Express: ....
HOW DID HE DO THAT
...
>.<
/me just watched mountains appear

Juushika: I know
it just
makes me all fuzzy inside
soothing and magical and hypnotizing

Express: ...
the knife

Juushika: bob ross I love you

Express: how
my mind

Juushika: when clips end I cry inside
when I find concurrent clips
I rejoice
there are layers of clouds, express
layers of happy little clouds
AND THEN THE CLIP ENDS
WHY
WHY YOU DO THIS TO ME

Express: I AM BEING AMAZED
HOW
IT JUST HAPPENS
he puts brush to canvas
THEN MAGIC

Juushika: happy little tree shapes T_T

Express: ...
so calm

Juushika: no mistakes
only happy accidents
and the secret to doing anything
is believing you can do it
bob ross please stop being perfect

Express: "i bet you're sitting there thinkin 'he's really messed up this time'… you may be right"
END OF CLIP



Juushika: NO NO STOP THAT
STOP IT BOB
STOP

Express: i dont even know


and I end leave you with...
Express: LITTLE BIRDS GOTTA HAVE A PLACE TO PUT THEIR FOOTS

Meanwhile, there's this:


After I heard of Madison's death, I went out in the hall (which is where August spends her early evenings, napping outside my door—why not inside on the comfy bed? who knows, but it makes her happy, so who cares) and pulled August into my lap. Don't let her delicate little kitten features fool you: August is surprisingly large and has a solid warm physicality to her, wide soft flanks and handfuls of rich smooth fur. When she came home with us she was a bit uncomfortable about being picked up—she wouldn't squirm out of it, but her tail would twitch and she'd climb away when she could. She used to live in a home with small children, which may explain things. It bothered me a little because I love holding cats, but I gave her her space and over time she's grown increasingly tolerant. But that day she sat in my lap, her torso pressed to mine, and let me hold her with nary and tail-twitch, warm and soft and so solid.

And today so help me if she will not leave me alone for the hour I need to edit pictures and write this post. She is full of cuddles and purrs, and let me clip a mat from her haunches, and she tries to bite my knee but it's too big to fit in her mouth.

I love this cat. She's not a Madison-replacement, although in a way I think I initially intended her to be. She is her own independent beast, and she is ridiculous, and I love her and am so thankful to have her near me right now.

So it seems like a good time to upload what I've been saving up on my hard drive, and give you some sundry August pictures and anecdotes (and one video clip) of the cute and beautiful and silly variety.

( +8: August sleeping and kneeding and close up and looking funny. )

That's August.

Who's Noah, and who's Noah's wife?

Sometimes, when I'm bored or having an off day or am looking to kill time, I watch clips of Whose Line Is It Anyway until my cheeks and my stomach ache.

I don't talk much about my day to day life—mostly because I was away from LJ for a few months, but also because there's just not a lot of it to talk about. These last few years I've become increasingly home-bound, largely by choice. I don't work, and I dropped out of school. Devon and I live together, of course; I live with his family as well, but I spend most of my time in my room. I see my family once a week. My social life is largely online, and at this point (as I'm spending most of my time reading) fairly limited. All of this is more or less intentional. It's how I cope with agoraphobia: I'm rarely afraid of being unable to flee when there's little that I'd want to escape. These days, I'm more likely to desire social contact than be frightened by it.

That means that the boy and I go out about twice a week, though it's usually just the two of us. And recently, what with my limited online social life, I've had even more energy for time spent in public. But the agoraphobia and anxiety are always ready and waiting, even if I've gotten better at avoiding them. Yesterday, after a couple of days in a row of going into town with Devon, I went out on our street (we live off an unpaved road at the edge of town where there are hedges and fields everywhere) to cut grass for the guinea pigs (no pictures of them lately, but they're fine) and ran into one of the neighbors. I've met a few of them this way, which is fine; this was just five minutes spent talking to a man (in his 60s, perhaps?) that live a few houses down. But it was just too much for me, that unexpected conversation. I came back to the house and crashed hard. It took me all of today to recover enough that I wasn't exhausted and unfocused and continuously replaying the conversation (my anxiety often manifests in obsessive thoughts).

I read a lot (the sequel to Maledicte, yay!), and watched a whole lot of Whose Line.

I'm used to this cycle: I conserve my social energy, actually want to expend it, enjoy expending it, but as soon as it's gone—I'm out for the count. Luckily I can crash in safety these days, but it's still impressive how hard those crashes are when they come.

Yeah. (The best line of that clip: the very last one.)

I've been exploring my therianthropy more since last posting about it—but the slow work introspection and exploration is rarely worth writing about. Rarely, but not always: I've realized an interesting disconnect in the thought processes of my self-as-human and self-as-cat. (I say "self as human" and "self as cat" not because the two are separate, but because they are sometimes different—and labeling those differences makes them easier to discuss.)

( My human brain, experiencing my cat brain, and the disconnect. )

I've definitely moved beyond the avid fascination I had when discovering the therian community, and I've moved on to introspection and thought and even hypnotism recordings. It's a good change, building personal awareness and making some good headway—both in knowing myself, and improving myself overall, human and animal.

Slightly tangential, I did have an interesting experience with the recording: when told my black claws were forming, I saw them as white. I'm incredibly hesitant to assign physical characteristics to my cat self—I think that it's primarily my self-as-human which cares about appearances, and most of my "gut instincts" are probably just projections. But white claws is concrete and a bit more reliable. It's an interesting tidbit, and worth remembering at least.

Quite tangential: ( In other, unrelated, cat news: a video. )

I haven't done one of these in a while, so: I come bearing pigspam!

Crossposted to guinea_pigs.

One pictures, of Kuzco in the travel cage, peeking out from behind his blanket and into the sunlight. One video, of (mostly) Kuzco exploring his fresh, clean cage. When I'm cleaning the cage, Kuz goes in the travel cage and Dink & Alfie go on Kuzco's smaller side of the C&C cage. They can't interact from that far away, so it's rather lively when everyone goes back in the big cage. There are some adorable shots of Kuzco popcorning for joy, and also some shots of how they all interact through the bars of the cage: Kuzco teases Alfie, Alfie is a jerk, but they can't fight.

The second video is an amusing recent phenomenon, exhibited by Alfie: all three of the boys have a certain spot, just on top of their bums, that makes them spaz out if you scratch it. It's not unlike a dog's scratch reflex, but guinea pigs groom by scratching, licking their paws and rubbing it against their faces, and bending around to nibble at offending body parts—so when you find their scratch spot, their particular brand of crazy reaction involves nibbling, paw grooming, and squirming attempts to reach their faces around to their backs. It's funny to watch.

Onward, then, to the cuteness.


( +2 videos. )

It's strange: Alfie is my least-loved of the pigs, and yet he appeals to me most, lately. I don't say "least-loved" as a bad thing—I adore all of my boys to pieces and beyond, but while I'm quite close with Dink and am Strong Protector Mommy for Kuzco, Alfie and I have a much more distant relationship. He's not particularly people-centered and to be honest he lives in something of his own world, where I think there are random noises (which no one else can hear) and random shinies dangling just over his head (which no one else can see) and ever now and then a chorus of chirps which he joins in with despite the fact that no one else on this plain can hear it. Really, that's the only explanation I have for many of his behaviors.

In a way, however, Alfie's oddities make him the most interesting of my pigs. I've been finding it quite enjoyable to observe him lately, and to learn to interact with him on his somewhat distant level. He may not love me the way that Dink does nor need me the way that Kuzco does, but the fact that he lives in his own little world makes him a wonder to watch. It grants him exceptional personality. (The hair helps.) He's always a little amused, always a little active, always finding something new to poke his nose into, even if the rest of us can't see it.

An example, though not stellar (as there is no over-the-head watching or chirping) is a video I took earlier today. It was a monster to upload on this horrendous internet, but that's neither here nor there. It's just a few minutes watching Alfie in the cage while he ignores me, wanders around, bothers Dink, antagonizes Kuzco (often by stealing his bedding), and so forth. (He also scratches quite a lot, but I swear his skin is fine and no one has mites. In the half dozen videos I took this morning, all three boys itched and groomed like crazy the whole time. Before and since, they've shown no urge to do so. Little buggers, I swear they do it on purpose.)

( Three minutes of Alfie doing nothing special in his cage. )

I promise that the other boys are getting love too, as well as grass time outside. I just haven't gotten any good vids or pictures of them recently.

Somewhat less related to Alfie: I took a picture of my cage set up for justsurvive earlier today, so why not share it here? For my records if nothing else.

( One picture of the guinea pig cage. )

The guinea pig cage is 4x5 cube sides, which by internal dimensions comes out to about 23 square feet, in other words, huge. It is of course an C&C cage, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I put the coroplast inside the cube sides, and I use fleece and towels for bedding. Kuzco's section is on the left (5x2) and Dink and Alfie share the enclosure on the right (5x3). They chatter at each other through the divider, but can no longer fight, which is a blessing. The size gives plenty of room for running around, pooing (everywhere—I took this pic 40 minutes after vacuuming the cage, and they were already repopulating it with poo), and hiding places, and hay—which would be in the middle of each enclosure, except that I ran out last night, so we have to run and pick some up. I've gone through a few cage set ups at smaller sizes and with lofts, but this is my favorite by far. It's huge, but otherwise ideal for this ornery little herd.

I promise pictures of the other pigs sometime, but I think that's plenty guinea chatter for now.

I come bearing videos of myself and my pigs. Having finally found my proper flash card and the card reader (which were hiding in about as close to plain sight as they could have been without dangling from the ceiling to hover over my keyboard), I figured I should make up for the fact that I've gone so long without a proper picspam. You were deprived, I know.

( Therefore: Videos of me with Dink and Alfie, me with Kuzco, and me with ... my hair. )

Enjoy!