Hi. My Name Is Gary, and I’m a Papyrophile.

Moleskine

<This is where you all say, “Hi, Gary!” at the same time.>

<No, go on and do it.>

<I’m not going to continue until you do it.>

<I’m waaaaiiiiitiiiiiing.>

<Thank you.>

Some people collect unicorns. Some collect turtles. Some collect mementos¹ from a favorite movie or TV show, or autographs.

Others collect everything, and we call these people “hoarders.”

I have always been a fan of notebooks, notepads, clipboards, different types of paper . . . as far back as I can remember. I have a whole closet in my office at home replete with this kind of thing. It is with some degree of difficulty that I’m able to stop myself from buying more even though I have enough to last me many, many years.

Of course, when I buy really cool notebooks or notepads, I don’t want to use them because . . . well, they’re really cool. Somewhere in my house I have a notebook where the covers are made of computer circuit boards sanded smooth. No one has ever seen this because it’s really cool and using it would reduce the really coolness.

You see how this could become a type of trap, I’ll bet.

The other night, I went to a special Thursday night session of my Tuesday night writers group. I thought I might need to take notes, but alas! alack! I had no notebook. At all. (Because all of my really cool notebooks are locked in a closet in my office at home.)

The book store didn’t, of course, carry simple legal pads, which is all I wanted, really.

But what they did have were Moleskine notebooks. A lot of them. I neeeeeeded something to write on. Really. So I bought a three-pack of dark red Moleskine notebooks. But this time, I was determined to actually use them even though they are really cool.

Of course, I needed to take no notes at all. So at the end of a more-than-two-hour meeting, my Moleskine was unsullied by ink or graphite.

I wanted it sullied. I wanted it sullied in the worst possible way.² But every moment of unsullied . . . ness was one moment closer to these three really cool Moleskine notebooks finding their way into my closet.

I brought them to work with me on Friday morning, thinking surely I’d find a way to sully them. Or at least one of them. Surely.

But . . . I didn’t want to use them for work. (There. You see how this starts? A really cool notebook shouldn’t have mundane things written in it, like notes from a silly meeting or phone conference. A really cool notebook needs to have really cool things written in it.)

When I went to lunch, I took one of them with me. The intent was to use the notebook to work through some ideas for my alphabet series of short stories I talked about the other day. I was stuck at the time on the letter F.

I took along my favorite pen. (Which, incidentally, I also seldom use because it’s really cool and I might lose it or chip it or damage it in some way. See how this goes?)

Well . . . I did it. I wrote “F Is for Fangs” at the top of the first page and . . . and . . . took notes! In my really cool Moleskine notebook using my really cool ACME Writing Instrument. And then put “D Is for Dragon” on the next page. And “H Is for Hive” on the one after that. And “G Is for Gravesite” on the one after that.

Sullied! I have sullied my Moleskine notebooks! I even crossed some stuff out so it’s not perfect.

If you knew how big a step this is, you would not now be making that face and thinking about rotating one hand at your temple in the international symbol for “one ring short of a binder” or making that “cuckoo” sound. Yes, I know what you were thinking. I mean, come on . . . it was obvious.

I thought I had lost said sullied notebook, but today I found it and made some more story notes, including a snippet of dialogue for “D Is for Dragon,” which I’m going to have a lot of fun writing.

One page for each letter of the alphabet will use 26 whole pages.

Oh, and Z? It’s for Zombie, and these are the stories that keep sleep from me. “Zombie” and “from me” kind of rhyme . . .

Disclaimer: This post may not be used to establish or confirm any lack of sanity that may be hinted at by the contents thereof.

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1. Every time I see this word, my mind says, “The Fresh-Maker!”
2. Well, that’s not true. The worst possible way would be to give them to Snooki and have her pen her next best-seller on them. Oog. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. But I digress.

Originally published at WriteWright. You can comment here or there.

Lucy and Me

Lucy and I . . . we have a thing.

Let's face it. As much as I love cats, even I admit that they really only ever want four things.

1. Pet me.


2. Feed me/give me water.


3. Let me in/out of there/here.


4. Bug off, I'm sleeping.

I'm assuming here that the cat in question is neutered. If not, add a fifth item.¹

Every morning when I get up, Lucy hears and comes hopping into the bathroom and starts talking to me. First on the agenda: Pet me.

I may be on the toilet (TMI, I know, but hey, we all do it, or so Taro Gomi tells us.), but all that means to Lucy is "Hey, you're not otherwise engaged, so pet me. If I don't, she punctuates her chatter with a well-placed application of unsheathed claws to bare flesh. (In a very amusing turn of events this morning, she yawned as she did this and missed my leg by about six inches. It was cute.)

After that is done, she needs a drink of water, so I have to empty her water bowl (if it's not just come from the faucet, it is stale and completely unpotable) and get her fresh water. Then I go to the sink to get the ointment out of my eyes. While I wait for the water to get warm, Lucy needs to get into the counter under the sink. (Keep in mind she's still warbly-chattering at me this whole time.) Apparently, she has urgent business in there that we mere hominins are not capable of fathoming with our inferior, primate brain structure.

After she has inspected under that sink, I have to let her under the other sink because . . . who knows why. I merely know that she needs to look. It's a feline thing, apparently.

By now, I have my eyes degooped and Lucy is ready for breakfast, but I, being the thumb-possessing member of the household, haven't had my shower, yet. So I do that. Occasionally, Lucy decides that she simply must inspect the still-wet, still-warm interior of the shower.

I go into my closet to get dressed. I have a narrow dressing mirror propped against the wall at the far end of my closet. Lucy seems to believe deep within her furry soul that this is a door that I simply will not open for her. She laboriously makes her way over three laundry baskets of dirty clothes (she is three-legged, so this involves a lot of interesting acrobatics) to stand in the farthest basket peering intently into the "other room." She never seems to notice the "other cat" or the "other thumb-monkey" in the "other room." She just knows it's a doorway, there's stuff "in there," and she therefore must go through it.

Once I'm dressed—Lucy does not understand the need for tied shoelaces and thinks every morning that when I walk out of the closet with untied shoes that we are finally going to get food—I leave the bathroom and Lucy streaks ahead of me, chattering at me with a little more urgency. It has, after all, been as much as seven hours without gooshy-food.²

Once outside my bedroom door, she demands to be let into Yvonne's room (the door is closed and is therefore an affront to feline kind). I refuse, and pick her up to carry her down the stairs.

Why? Because even though she is perfectly capable of zooming down them faster than I am, she has an annoying tendency to stop unexpectedly on the stairs and . . . one day I'm going to trip and fall headfirst down the stairs. So I carry her.

That, and she's a complete invalid and old and decrepit and needs carrying. Or so she claims.

Anyway, once we're downstairs—she having traded the chattering for contented purrs—I put her down and begin the Ritual of Feline Victualization™.

She and her brother Matt, who has now joined her from his place on my couch, sit side-by-side with their backs to me waiting for me to hurry and get the gooshy-food into the bowls. Sometimes, the wait is too much and one or the other—or both—of them will come over to look up at me in that way that means, "Aren't you done yet?"

Once I have the can distributed evenly between the two bowls, I carry it toward where I feed them, in what I call The Cat Room™. (An enclosed patio with lots of windows.) Matt usually gives me an extremely sotto voce warble and Lucy one, single, plaintive meow of impatience as I cross the distance from the kitchen sink to The Cat Room™. If I wash my hands first, sometimes the wait gets unbearable and Lucy scolds me.

I don't let it happen often.

After that . . . she's done with me. I—or more appropriately, my thumbs—have fulfilled my purpose in her life and am quite thoroughly dismissed. Doorknob, ass, etc. "I said good day!"

It's really a good thing I don't let the cats control my behavior or rule me in any way. I mean, those people who let their pets control them are just sad, don't you think?

[Note: That is not Lucy depicted in my userpic, but her brother, Matt, who is slightly more photogenic.]

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1. Gremlin had a slightly different fifth item. He had a deep, psychological need for his litter to be pristine. He actually had a special meow that meant, "Clean my litter!" Don't believe me? Ask my mother. She's heard it.
2. They have an automatic feeder with an unending supply of dry food, but Lucy does not like dry food.