I sit here with hands thoroughly stained red. Oh, yes, and there's a strawberry pie congealing in the refrigerator. We shall have strawberry pie tonight, and it shall be goooood.

I might even make lemon bars. I've got enough time, and I think I've got enough lemons.

Note to self: I need to purchase or replace the following items: big spatula (I've killed another), lemon reamer, pastry brush, pasta forks.

Stomach, down.
Globular compression
between 250-count percale
and unyielding rib.
Chin over pillow
in the dark,
blue lines on white sheets,
pointing, headboard to footboard.
Arms outstretched, encircled,
You, a half-sleeping reach
to draw breath scented
of my shampoo.
In the nearsighted world
between undress and sleep
I can only wonder
at your previous life's price
which purchased a rebirth
as the most spoiled creature
in my household.
(meow.)

***

If you haven't seen the Library of Congress' exhibit 'The Empire That Was Russia'—The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Revealed, then you should take the time to look at it.

Before you do, though, read up on the process. A short summary: a photographer travelled around Russia in the 1910s ('nineteen-teens' if you're my grandmother), photographing everything from royalty to commoners to landscapes to architecture.The incredible thing is the medium he used—a camera with three filters, which provided him three photographic plates. One red, one green, one blue. He apparently had a stereoscope-like contraption that allowed him to project his images back together into one color photograph for others to view.

I. Perigee

Our ends of the world diverge on Sundays,
whose mornings I spend in blissful sleep
while you, dutiful, arrow-straight, make haste
to wash and clothe and drive. All to keep

the Sabbath. In the winding arch and curve
of your days, this one claims itself parahelion:
the closest to origins; the day to observe,
revere, reflect; resolution.II. Parabola

Two lines, if not drawn in perfect parallel,
deal with the pains of intersection at some point.
They meet, then disengage, and tell

More often than not, inferences about my life can be drawn from what I do not write about here on domesticat as well as what I do write about. Since beginning this weblog-turned-journal-turned-something-else-entirely a while back, there have been events in my life that I have not written about here.

Each time, the choice to withhold has been a deliberate one, made after much thought. I've come to grips with the fact that my life is, to some small degree, on display here—but that's for another story, another night. Tonight I'm tipping into the wider half of a bottle of Chardonnay, left unfinished from a night that we had friends over, and trying to dredge up a bit of bravery.

A bit of a break was required after Friday's posting extravaganza.

The house is quiet. The front wooden door is open, leaving just the glass door closed. The cats awakened from their second nap of the day when I came home a few minutes ago. The fans are on, the kitchen's mostly clean, and I'm sitting here, waiting for my friends and Jeff's parents to show up.It is over. It is really, truly over. I saw him graduate with my own eyes—graduate regalia slightly askew, squinting to find his friends and family in the crowd, thousand-watt smile.

I called Andy and Brad on my cell phone while waiting for everyone else to get ready to go home, and said, "It's over. It's really over. It's really really over."

I am pathetic, I am funny, I am listmaker, hear me roar.

I make a lot of lists, although I occasionally like to smoke some crack and think that I'm not exactly ruled by my to-do list. My troubles of scribbling down multiple lists—and subsequently losing them—have been cured by my December procurement of a Handspring Visor—quite possibly one of the best purchases I've ever made.

Trips bring out the worst listmaker in me. Especially, in this case, when I will be travelling quite far from home, and will end up in a different climate than the one I'm beginning in.

For my birthday, my friends gave me this fabulous spiral-bound notebook that now contains everything from poetry snippets to plants I want in my flowerbeds to random sketches of my cats.

Brad announces that he's getting ADSL soon. That means I have to get back to work on domesticat.

What many of you don't see is that Brad's been responsible for me doing many of the cool things to domesticat that I've done over the past year. The friendly design rivalry between us extends back for almost the entire time I've known him.It began as a geeky game of one-upsmanship: upon seeing what one person had done to their site, the changes inspired the other to make similar changes to theirs—and then go a step further.

Thus domesticat went from a static page to a dynamic one. PHP and strict style sheet usage got thrown into the mix. Song lists were shown. Favicons. Daily entries. Better graphics, quicker download times, more cohesive themes. Search functions. Webcams (I swear mine will return soon).

Breathe, Amy, breathe.

Known: that I get nervous before trips.
Unknown: why I am so much more worried than usual about this one.

We head out in 72 hours. (O Canada…) Packing list: done. Clothes: not yet washed. Mind: not yet calmed. While it is normal for me to worry about takeoffs and landings a bit, it's been quite some time since I've experienced the sheer volume of worry and unease that's floating around my gut regarding this trip.

Yes, that, exactly.

Most of the past twenty-four hours have been spent in meandering preparation for canadatrek. The end result: I'm packed, and Jeff's packed. Everything that's required has been done, and the to-do list is down to more mundane things, like running loads of dishes and cleaning the litterbox.

The cats know that something's up. Every time Edmund and I cross paths, I receive a baleful kitty stare. Perhaps he has come to associate the smell of luggage with me vanishing from his life for a few days. If he has, he's a smart kitty. Tenzing, on the other hand, just wants to be played with.

Website-related news: at last, I have working code to make domesticat skinnable. I'm going to use the time while I'm gone to let the graphic-design part of my brain rest and rejuvenate. I'm working on a second skin, based off of a theme of storm clouds and lightning, but I'm waiting to get permission from the original photographer before I use the picture.

We're on vacation. I—and the entries I post to domesticat—will return very very late Monday night. Cheerio!

- Amy

These are the random images that just don't fit anywhere else…