Vomit

You know what the blogosphere needs more of? Feline vomit.
So, I'll do my part by offering some of mine. I have extra, you see.
PLENTY TO SPARE.
That's because my two furry black and white angels, Moxie and Mimi, see fit to purge their bellies of unpleasant cargo at least three times a week onto my carpet. Generally, they perform this female feline ritual during the wee hours of the morning. It is not uncommon for me to wake up to the sound of "HACK. HACK. PUKE." This game is played much like Duck Duck Goose, if the goose at the end was half hairball/half digested tuna.

Now, I must admit that Mimi has struggled with bulimia for some time - since her early adolescence, in fact. I have told her repeatedly that her figure is perfect and you can't trust what you see in magazines - they totally photoshop Pepe le Pew's girlfriend - and I tell her she is beautiful - prettier than Pussy Galore - but I still find her binging on salmon at breakfast and then running into the bedroom and throwing up on the carpet. Adding insult to injury, organic cat salmon costs as much as organic people salmon. Thanks, Mimi. I'll just clean up the bile and small fortune you threw up on the carpet. And, no, Mimi, covering it up with my clean laundry won't help. Plus, during the hot months, Moxie adds her nausea to the mix.

However, as summer and my cats' digestive problems wear on, I find myself increasingly unwilling to undertake said clean-up. In my humble defense, when I moved into my loft, the carpet was already nasty. In fact, the first thing I noticed when I looked at my apartment the first time was the smell. I walked in the door and was hit by a wall of moldy old smoke-grime smell. The thinning brown-grey rag that covered the entire flat was apparently (twenty years ago) white and blue striped carpet. At the time, I stood in the entry way of the apartment and held my nose and asked my future landlady, "So, it will be cleaned before I move in, right?" And she said, "Oh, it's been cleaned." I knew then that there wasn't much more damage my two cats could do to it.

Thus, I have a few small patches of cat vomit collecting on my floor. I keep meaning to clean them, but pressing tasks like baking pumpkin custard keep getting in the way. This post will hopefully disgrace me into performing my pet guardian responsibilities.
The culprits:








The vomit:









The pumpkin custard:

the taste of summer

I despise being hot.

I dislike that sticky, sweaty, I-can-never-get-clean feeling that permeates un-air-conditioned summers. Unless I'm lying on a beach somewhere, with an ocean or a swimming pool within spitting distance, I have no desire for sunshine and heat. I can get my vitamin D from a glass of milk. Generally, Paris is a pleasant city for this temperament. Its months of rainy, gray, 'bluh' weather are familiar and soothing to a former Chicagoan. However, soon enough, the clouds burn off, and I must cope with the sunny season. My defense mechanisms have been noted on this blog before, and I am now adding another: my new boyfriend, Grom.

I had thought that I had found my cold treat of choice this summer - my homemade iced coffee. Which morphed into homemade iced green tea a couple weeks ago. Alas, I got bored, and I got hot, and I left my house. And, wandering through the tourist armpit that is St. Germain, I ran into Grom. He was unassuming, clean-cut, approachable, Italian. I'm usually a little leery of Italians in France. They strike me as out of place - in-your-face, overbearing, flaunting their goods, and then leaving you feeling ill and spent. But Grom was smooth and delicately sweet. He felt divine in my mouth - a clean, soothing coolness with a little bit of texture. He satisfied my yearning and left me wanting more. A lot more. In fact, now we make out several times a week. I've heard he's amazing in gelato, but I'm a good girl. I stop at granita. Lucky for me, Grom's almond granita is better than any gelato I've had, and Grom is only offering it until September. He isn't in it for the long-term. But that's fine because I was planning on breaking up with him as soon as the weather turns, anyways.




Grom
81 rue de Seine
Paris 75006

Chuckle

I cannot take credit for this brilliance.