J: I dreamed I squeezed a pimple on your back, and a diamond came out.

R: Bwah! That would be the Claire.

J: You think?

R: I can’t believe Zoe’s really leaving!

Aaron: Yeah, it’s scary. We have to find a new roommate now and she’s a hard act to follow.

R: “You must be a genius cellist, and way cute.”

A: “Funny, whimsical and happy to do the dishes.”

Thirteen or fifteen years ago, no one can remember exactly when, a six-week-old black and white kitten was dumped at the Warringah Shire Council offices in Dee Why. My sister worked there at the time and is a sucker for cats. She brought him home to Bluegum, where he promptly adopted my mother.

Mum named him Monty. He rapidly ballooned to implausible size. Imagine a mink-lined medicine ball with a long skinny tail and four spindly legs. His eyes were huge and manic. He had white whiskers and a long snout. In retrospect, he may have been part badger.

When Mum and Dad ran away to join the gypsies, serially-monogamous Monty transferred his affections to my brother Alain. He and Alain eventually moved out of Bluegum to another house in Frenchs Forest, where their roommates smoked and drank way too much. One of these delightful chaps, in a drunken rage, threatened to kill Monty, so Alain packed the cat and some clothes in his car and drove to Tenterfield to meet up with Mum and Dad. Monty escaped that night and was missing for hours. We thought we’d lost him then, but at last he came to Al’s call.

They moved in with Sarah and Max and the kids in Brisbane. Al got a job and found an apartment of his own, but pets weren’t allowed, so our hero spent his last years lolling in the sun at Patricks Road. Last week my mother noticed he had a respiratory infection and took him to the vet. X-rays revealed an obstruction in his larynx. A biopsy revealed inoperable squamous cell carcinoma. Mum and Al decided to put him to sleep before he suffered.

Nothing in my family happens without large helpings of farce, so when Max dug a grave for Monty, near but hopefully not too near where Sade is buried, he uncovered the well-preserved skeleton of a cat. It probably wasn’t Sade. Even so, this was too much for Kelly, who fled in tears.

Meanwhile Ross, nephew of my heart, inspected the fossil feline and said: “Can I keep it?”

I must get him the Lemony Snicket books.

…as an observation that it’s about time I finished various projects, to wit:

Cappadocia
Wild Horses of the Japanese Tea Gardens
Dead Cinemas of the Mission District
For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey

…oh, yeah, and the novel.

Quinn: So how can you SWIM in the SEA in Australia when EVERYTHING IS POISONOUS!?!

R: Oh, but it’s absolutely gorgeous, I miss it a lot. The water is really warm and clear and the sand is golden. I wasn’t even much of a beach baby – I totally took it for granted that we lived near this mile-long beach with dunes and a lagoon and bombora, and didn’t realize until years later that Dee Why is something amazing… and it’s just one of Sydney’s beaches, and there are dozens of them… Ocean Beach is just awful by comparison.

Q: True. I did love the beaches I grew up around in Southern California. I loved the tidal pools and the wildlife.

R: Yeah, I had these huge shell collections, and I loved touching the sea anemones. The littoral zone is so rich there they say the Eora and Guringai people only had to spend a couple of hours a day collecting food, and they got to spend the rest of their time having sex and telling stories.

Danny: Huh. Just like being a freelance journalist.

(A quick Google reveals that Dee Why is also the origin of both Surf Life Saving clubs and the scientific study of rips. Who knew?)

R: Do you like the name Jane?

J: It’s plain.

R: I like Jane.

J: It’s probably one of those names that’s so common no one uses it any more. Like John. I wonder what they’re going to do about John and Jane Doe? It’ll have to be, you know, Joshua and Mackenzie Doe.

R (talking into imaginary walkie talkie): Chief, we got us an Emily Doe washed up on the shore of the lake…

I dreamed that I was trying to help Gayu and Kamala search for their neighbors in Chennai.

Medecins sans frontieres

Here are the five books that I am switching restlessly between:

Gladstone, A Biography
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Class
Night and Horses and the Desert
Snow
What’s Going On In There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life

Christmas Eve. We’re all curled up in bed, sleeping late. Claire turns to me and says: “Peepee-you -” (this is her word for any small bird that makes a peeping noise) “peepee-you is a baby chicken.”

Later I say: “I’m feeling lazy Miss Claire. Would you get up and make us some tea?”

She pads off into the living room and comes back chanting “Hot tea, hot tea.” She’s found the mugs with the dregs from the night before, and brings them to us one at a time. Hardly spills a drop.

R: Save me. There’s a clown.

J: Scary.

R: Would you take a joke for me, if you had to? Do you love me that much?

Later, on the bus.

J: I heard her say she’s going to a meeting. Maybe it’s the clown’s union.

R: No one will take them seriously dressed like that.

J: “Who are these clowns?”

R: “Get this clown out of my office!”

J: “And take your pie!”

R: “No, leave the pie.”

Together: “Mmm, pie.”

We walk out of Sideways together.

R, triumphant: And that’s why you let ME pick the movie!

J: What? I picked it.

R: You’d never even heard of it till I mentioned it this morning!

J, smug: It’s the movie I would have picked, if I’d known it existed.

Claire (thoughtfully inspecting one of those seed pods from a liquid amber tree): Star? Ball? (Looking up at us with joy) Starball!

1. The Force is strong in this one

J: It’s depressing when you think you’ve thought up a new joke, and you Google it, and thousands of other people got there first.

R: Tell me your joke.

J: Well the new Knights of The Old Republic game is out. And the first one was always called KOTOR, so I thought it would be fun to review it and call the review “Welcome back, KOTOR.”

2. Happy Days

New phone: BRRING!

R: Hello?

J: So do you think if the writers of Arrested Development decide to have the show jump the shark, they’ll put Henry Winkler on waterskis again?

The phone rings.

R: Hello?

J: Hello!

R: Okay, so it turns out I didn’t have to worry about that Earthsea thing on Scifi being unfaithful to the books after all.

J: No?

R: No. ‘Cause apparently they’re based on a completely different set of Earthsea books, by some other writer called Ursula K. Le Guin.

J: Ah. Not good then?

R: I. Have. Not. The. Words. Well, no, I do: so Ged is Bobby Drake from the X-Men movies, and he’s running around being all, like, California surfer dude, totally. And Danny Glover looks pretty good as Ogion the Silent, but he just WILL not shut up. Which is not, y’know, really in the spirit of that character. And God, the script is so awful, with all the beauty and weirdness and darkness excised, like they found-and-replaced all the good stuff with the nearest roughly equivalent cliche… Let me put it this way. We’ve already had someone yelling “Ged! NOOO!”

J: Err. So everyone knows his secret name?

R: Ah. Well. Ged is his public name in this one, and Sparrowhawk is his secret name. So it’s completely backwards and lame. Oh, Jeremy, I feel so sorry for some of the people involved, because they’ve done quite a nice job with the cinematography and the whole ripping off Weta’s art direction and costume design thing, but my Christ it’s a cynical cash-in. I bet I know how they sold it to the network: The Legendary Adventures of the Fellowship of Harry Potter the Vampire Slayer, Warrior Princess!

J: Did Tolkien write that?

R: I think it was CS Lewis. Hurry home now.

J: Love you. (click)

The phone rings again.

R: Hello?

J: So you’re saying it’s The Tie-in, the Pitch and the Wardrobe?

R: Guess who’s getting blogged on his birthday?

J: Yay me!

I tried it myself this morning:

“Sunshine
Cassoulet
Platanos con crema
Jeremy!
Claire!
Bebe!
Bernal Heights
Ponies
Glenn Gould
Yo Yo Ma
Jane Austen
Patrick O’Brian
The Enlightenment
The separation of church and state
The emancipation of women
Clean water, health care and education for all
Tea!”

Late last night, cleaning up after Jeremy’s KICK ASS AWESOME birthday party. (Thank you everybody! He got MONDO DE cool presents, including a a talking Laa Laa and a backpack in the shape of a frog. Claire got a book on UI design. Or vice versa.) We’re all a bit drunk and the kids are in a heap on the floor cushions. (Or vice versa.)

D: There should be stand-up toddler comedians. Imagine it. It’s brilliant. “So, parents, what’s with them, huh?”

R: “Have you ever thought about poop? I mean, really? Who came up with that?”

Q: But what if someone heckled? I could always get heckled off the stage.

R: Just disarm them with something positive. Like, “Puppies!”

D: Yeah! “So who here likes puppies?”

In related toddle-tainment news, Claire has been writing songs that resemble the Pet Shop Boys’ Paninaro – ie, they are lists of nice things, set to a catchy tune. She’s singing one now, as Jeremy rocks her to sleep:

“Mamma
Dadda
Brum! Brum!
Dinda (woof!)
Bebe (meow!)
Rowan
Cian
Blanca
Dadda!
Apple juice
Agua
The books!
The books!
Luna
Star
Yellow
Flowers
Green
Trees
Mamma
DADDA!”

Last night I dreamed that my teeth fell out, and I wept and tried to gather them up, and said “I’ve dreamed about this but I never thought it would really happen.” What makes this especially poignant is that (1) my grandma had all her teeth pulled when she was 20, and lived another 76 years with dentures; and (2) I have a dental appointment this afternoon.

I also dreamed that I worked as an embalmer in a funeral home by a lagoon in the bush near Killara, in Sydney. I swam in the lagoon and met Brad deLong; we trod water and discussed macroeconomics. David Boies swam by. Brad and I found towels and walked across the car park to find a cup of coffee. About halfway across the parking lot was a brown and fetid little spring. “It’s all that’s left of the Aral sea,” said Brad.

R: How’s the graze on Claire’s hand?

J: Better.

R: Every time you take her out, she comes back with a bump or scratch.

J: She’s a toddler.

R: True.

J: If they were graceful at this age, they’d be prancelers.

Claire has discovered grammar, including the past tense (so that “Dada! Dada Mama dada zapatos dada Claire” means “Hey Dad! Mum and I went to Rockridge Kids and bought these cool new shoes!”) and the subjunctive (“Dada Mama dada brum! brum! dada woof!” -> “Mum, let’s drive to Salome’s to see Belinda!”)

Still no verbs or conjunctions, leaving “Dada” (and sometimes “Dadada”) to take the place of everything that isn’t a noun. Still, it’s better than the days when “Dada” just meant everything good, and “Mama” meant “DISAPPOINTED!”

Last night as we drove to Carole and Jamey’s. On the car stereo: Soul Coughing, Ruby Vroom. Michael Doughty sings:

I’ve seen the Kansas of your sweet little myth
You’ve never seen it, now I’m half drunk on the drinks you mixed
Through your
True dreams

Claire: Two three!

MD: of Wichita

C: … star

J: I loved that queryletters site. There was this one movie pitch about a guy who married an heiress who died, so he found another woman and gave her plastic surgery to look like his wife, so he could keep the money. And it was so obvious that the writer had fallen in love with his hook, changing a woman into another woman, so all the characters had to just run around and obey the plot. And all the pitches are like that!

R: That site saddens me. The heiress plot is such transparent wish-fulfillment fantasy. The writer wants to make interchangeable women because he thinks it’ll make him rich.

J: There’s a line in an Umberto Eco novel about how tiring it is to be a fictional character. The plot is always kicking you along, and you never get to be yourself.

R: Those letters are from the people who never figured out that ‘A hero goes on a journey’ and ‘A stranger comes to town’ are actually the same story.

I order our bagels. Jeremy finds a table. I approach.

R: Well hello stranger. What brings you to town?

He wiggles his fingers around his mouth in the universal sign of octopi.

R: Oh no! You’re a Cthulhu! I married a Cthulhu!

J: No, I’m just in town for the Cthulhu convention.

R: Ah.

J: …

R (sighing inwardly): Yes?

J: Did you hear about the fortune teller who was molested at a Cthulhu convention?

R: No.

J: She filed a seersucker suit.