I'd like to take a moment out from your normal reading pleasure at domesticat.net to comment on the recent turn of events. I'd like to think that Amy wouldn't mind my stepping in and providing commentary while she is off in another room, watching a movie with Jeff.

I'm pleased to announce that domesticat.net, judging from the site stats, appears to have picked up readers number nine and ten! We at the Corporate end of domesticat.net are pleased to announce that due to this unexpected occurrence, we shall remain commercial- and advertisement-free for the time being.As you probably were not aware, Amy was under immediate and direct threats from domesticat.net's corporate sponsors to find some way of increasing readership to double digits or else she was going to be required (we truly dislike the word 'forced'—C.) to start including corporate advertisements in her entries.

I've been promising these photos for quite some time, but a post such as this had to wait until I'd gotten both rolls of film developed. After Dad was diagnosed with cancer, I spent a week in Arkansas, staying with Mom and Dad. I made a point to catch up with some old friends while I was there—all of them old friends who see me rarely, now that I live four hundred miles away.

(A number which Eleanor always says with a glare.)

Sean's birthday; cat photos

Shortly before I left, we celebrated Sean's birthday at a local restaurant. All of the locals, minus Geof cleared their schedules to show up:

Sean's birthday party, 2002
by domesticat.

In the land of the cats, it's always best for the two-footed beasts of burden to remember that everything, in the end, is always about the cats. Any two-footed beast of burden that believes themselves the sole owner and proprietor of their place of residence has never run out of cat food on a weekend.

Today, spouse and I attempted to reassert eminent domain upon this building we live in.

In other words, we tried to give the cats a new litterbox.

A friend of mine confessed to me recently that she didn't know what to say to me, because she's never lost a close friend or relative to death. I didn't tell her the real answer, because if you've never experienced it firsthand, you'll undoubtedly think the person telling you the answer is trying to deliberately mislead you for some strange reasons of their own.

In an effort to make the ultra-unhip domesticat.net appear fresh and new for spring, the front page of the site now displays shortened versions of several of the most recent entries. Yes, I'm catering to you goofy folks who have better things to do than visit my site every day to see what the last 1500 semi-coherent words have sprung from my keyboard.

There is a scene near the end of Living Out Loud where it becomes clear that Judith (played wonderfully by Holly Hunter) has finally, at last, forgiven herself. It's a late-night, dreamlike dénouement for a woman whose life hasn't even remotely turned out the way she might have wanted…but who has finally decided that she's going to take that life and make it her own.