Birthday Loot

[queerbychoice]

I got a bookcase! I got a bookcase! My parents gave me a beautiful new bookcase! Or rather, a beautiful new-to-me bookcase. It's one of theirs that my mother repainted to match my existing one; it looks virtually exactly like the one on the left in this picture that I already have. (The one that's perpendicular to the bricks-and-boards one.)

I also received the following books:

• Ama Ata Aidoo: Changes: A Love Story
• Paul Bowles: The Sheltering Sky
• Gwendolyn Brooks: Maud Martha
• Dee Brown: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
• Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities
• Victor Hugo: Les Miserables (plus accent marks that I don't feel like hunting around for the proper HTML codes for right now)
• Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• L. M. Montgomery: The Blue Castle
• Marilynne Robinson: Gilead
• Muriel Spark: Loitering with Intent
• August Strindberg: Five Plays: The Father, Miss Julie, The Dance of Death, A Dream Play, and The Ghost Sonata

And they gave me two CDs: Fundamental by the Pet Shop Boys and Everybody Loves a Happy Ending by Tears for Fears.

Mostly though, I'm extremely excited about the bookcase. Maybe I should have been expecting to receive it, because usually if I ask for something unusual and my mother isn't going to give it to me, she tells me ahead of time, "I'm not going to buy you that because _____ [it's too expensive or too hard to find or too hard to know what kind I'd like best, etc.]" so that I won't spend my birthday or Christmas being disappointed about not getting something that I expected to get. But I don't want to spend it being disappointed either, so it's safer to try to prepare myself for not getting it. But I did get it!

I think it's worth turning 30 to get a new bookcase. I might even be willing to turn 31 tomorrow in exchange for another bookcase. I could probably use another. Can that be arranged? But then I might also need a new apartment to fit it in, and moving is no fun. I've resolved never to move again until it's into a place that I'll own.

I gave Stardust canned kitten food in lieu of birthday cake, but she still didn't refrain from biting me. Maybe she knows that my 30-year birthday is also her estimated 4-month birthday, which means she's ready for her 4-month vaccinations now, and I will be subjecting her to them soon.

Comments

[dzuunmod.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you got things that excite you. It's endearing.

[saxifrage.livejournal.com]

Here's a weird question--does she seem really purring and loving when she bites you? Because some cats never quite get over being weaned, and so they'll try to bite people when they're being really loving because they're hoping there might be milk there. Do you think that's what's going on?

HAPPY DIRTY 30!!!!!

[joannasatana.livejournal.com]

:) :) :) :) :) :) :)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Moving is no fun at all. J and I have thrown ourselves into the world of the joys of moving since we've been back........but the REAL drag is having to clean out not only OUR stuff, but also all the stuff of my parents. Like literal DECADES AND DECADES of stuff of theirs. ugh ugh ugh!!!! That said, it will most definitely be the last time I move......until I'm thrown into an old age home at least!

Maybe Stardust is givin you "love" bites/mouth hugs. If she's not REALLY chomping down or hurting you when she gets ya, then it's probably just her being "affectionate". Our giant kitty Ash does that too!

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

She definitely tried to nurse on all sorts of things when she first got here. After a while, I hid the blankets that she most liked to nurse on in the closet, in an effort to "wean" her myself. She hasn't made any clearly recognizable effort to nurse on anything since then. It's certainly possible that some of her biting is related to that. Some of it, though, seems to be just that she wants to move my hands or feet out of her way so she can sit in the space that they're occupying. And some of the rest of it is playfulness. If some of it is nursing-related, that's probably a minority of it.

Re: HAPPY DIRTY 30!!!!!

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

She's definitely not biting down as hard as she could; it doesn't seem like she's trying to kill me or anything. But it doesn't seem particularly affectionate, either - more like, "Hey, move out of my way so I can sit here" or "Yay, fun feet to wrestle with."

Thanks for the birthday wishes! I hope your final moving agonies are over with SOON!

[frankepi.livejournal.com]

Who's the translator on the Strindberg? Is that the Harry Carlson?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is.

[frankepi.livejournal.com]

i wrote a paper at one point comparing his translation of Miss Julie to Elizabeth Sprigge's. i favored Carlson. i remain convinced, though, that there are NO adequate translations of Strindberg: frustrating since he's one of my favorite playwrights. hey! learn Swedish! we'll re-translate the plays together...

(if you haven't read Miss Julie you'll find it troubling, i imagine. it's simultaneoulsy mysoginist and classist and proto-feminist. Ghost Sonata is one of my favorite plays ever. and i've always wanted to work on A Dream Play [outside of class]).