After eight years, you get a little blasé about sharing birthday time with your spouse. Our birthdays aren't on the same day, exactly; just four days apart, but in a sequence that amused both our families to no end when they first realized a sequence existed. First Jeff's, then two days later his sister Lori's, and then two days later my birthday rounds out the series.

Sequence. Order. All slapping into place with a neat little snick, the sound of a previously-undiscovered hole in your life filling up.

For him: a book of linux server hacks. For me, a pair of sharpenable sewing scissors. Little things. For better or for worse, we're not the kind of people to make large productions out of birthdays.

It is a braless, serene Sunday, with all the men in my life dozing in different corners of the house. Tenzing has found a comfortable, shady spot in the reading room; Jeff is belly-down, snores-up in the master bedroom; and Edmund, having despaired of actually being helpful to me, has bathed himself to sleep on top of the guest bed, cheerfully dousing the dark green comforter with loose bits of off-white belly fur.

Edmund may not have been the brightest kitty in his litter, but he knows, with the intrinsic absolutism of feline knowledge, that my setting up the ironing board and scattering sewing implements on the bed means that I will, without a doubt, return.All he has to do is lie on top of the fabric and wait.

As soon as the dryer finishes drying the rest of the fabric I bought, I'll begin.

What, you don't believe the entry title? Silly you. I can't imagine why, what with my propensity for choosing arcane and random titles for my entries over the past three years. Nevertheless, let me reassure you; indeed, I speak truth, for tonight I created the technicolor feline pajamas of doom.

Well, okay, actually they're just technicolor feline flannel pajamas. Adam added the "(of doom)."

On the Saturday before dragon*con, I was sitting in the computer room, tending to minor items from my dragon*con checklist. Halfway down the list was the note "clean off camera." My camera's memory card had been slowly collecting photos from various places, none of which were ever quite enough to post at any one time.

I flicked through the photos and realized that, when added to the photos I'd been socking away on my desktop "for eventual use," that I had enough for a post. Therefore, I present for you a mishmash collection: The Shameless Feline.

Captain's log: Day 6,351,287. I have survived great olfactory evil. Why did it not occur to me that chemical solutions strong enough to denature wallpaper paste were strong enough to cause a queasy stomach - until after the fact? Why do I always manage to find the slowest cashier at a Wal-Mart on any given day? Why does Edmund persist in giving Tenzing unprovoked bites to his ass?

I don't hate the bathroom yet. Pretty fishtank. Lovely fishtank. I also don't hate wallpaper. I just hate the paste that holds it to the nearest wall.

My book lies on the bed, vanquished. It was finished only with the literary assistance of two very large, purring cats who could find nowhere else in the house to sleep but next to me. (A house full of cat-friendly napping places, and Tenzing couldn't find anywhere to sleep except draped over my right arm.)

I am now on the wrong side of one-thirty in the morning, waiting for a cup of rosehip tea to finish steeping, and pondering yet again the question that's been foremost in my mind: stay, or go?