Just when I said I would't write for a while...

Stan and I were in a very weird Disneyland sort of store or museum. OK, I've never been to Disneyland or Disneyworld* so I have no idea what it is like other than the hideous images I see on TV*. Actually, this was darker and more sinister. It had a very curious display of animatronic animals...puppies, kittens, ducks, bunnies. They were rather realistic except they had no fur or feathers...just a soft rubbery substance that was so soft to the touch it only seemed like fur. They were prompted by people's reactions to them to come up to you and get petted, roll around on the floor, act sweet, but never nip or bite. I was amazed that a robot could react so naturally to environmental prompts, yet puzzled that the exterior remained furless, and that they also looked rather slightly cartoony with exaggeratedly large heads and eyes. I think it would be easier to get the thing to *look* real rather than to program it for real reactions, but what do I know, I'm just an artist and not a geek.

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Instead of sitting on the futon/couch scrunched up with a Pug while I type this, I'm upstairs with Apollo. Last week we decided that since this quarantine is going to be longer than we had anticipated--even though all odds are that he's perfectly fine**, I'm going to have to find a way to actually make my time productive while I'm up here on kitten socialization duty. Yes, I can paint in the blue room, but I can't really watch the kitten well when I paint and I don't always want to paint. Yes, I can work on my desktop computer in the green room, but I would have my back to the main action, and I really don't use that as my main computer anymore anyway since I've gone into laptop mode. So I thought that having a small table up here to keep in the main upstairs room that I could sit at on the floor and work on jewelry or draw would be a good idea. This room is small and filled with plants, an exercise bike, boxes of envelopes (for my business), and art, so there's not room for a "real" table and chairs. I found some short table legs and some wood at Menards and Stan put it together for me. It's perfect. I sit on pillows on the floor, and the table is lightweight and can be moved aside so I can get out from under it. It's very Eastern, like some tea rooms at Asian restaurants, or some Middle Eastern restaurants where you can sit on the floor. I can eat here (I had a ham sandwich last night which I tried to train Apollo not to beg for) and right now I'm using my laptop on it. It's the perfect height. I'm surprised this sort of setup isn't more popular. It is very comfortable, and very non-Western. I'm not much of a chair person, and I hate dangling my legs. Even when I work on my deskop computer, I either put my legs up on my chair or up on a footstool. This way I don't have to. Why is this culture so chair-obsessed and anti-sitting on floors? I think floor sitting keeps one young. When I think about my parents or grandparents, they never sat on the floor. I don't want to be that way.

*Even if my parents had the money to, they never would've taken me to a place like that, which is one of the rare things I can respect about them. And why would I want to go as an adult? I hate artificial entertainment like that. Give me a natural history museum or a national park any day. Las Vegas, Disneyland...blech. You couldn't pay me to go.

**I did know a kitten that had Leukemia...Otto or Otis or something...one of the only Manx I had known. He was a next door neighbor cat--they thought he had been given vaccinations, but maybe he had come pre-infected and the shots didn't help. He got skinnier and skinnier until he died...sad, sad sad, so I don't want to take chances, although Caligula could stand to lose a few pounds if Apollo had it (I'm just kidding of course).

Good news...despite his sassier demeanor as of late, and his ambivalence about his own name, Apollo *does* know what a stern NO! means. If he's trying to get at a plant or some other bad cat thing, and one says "NO!", he'll chortle and run off.

Labels: Animals, Dreams