Mood: Monday


Katnip and John Riley have arrived to encourage you to VANQUISH your Monday mood if it’s a bad one. Find a bit of whimsy in your world to lift your heart.

Poor Katnip’s story ended on the blog abruptly on March 10, 2014. Savvy readers may remember I was busy doing volunteer work and became employed that year. Hers remains the love story that was never told.

She made a brief reappearance on January 28, 2017. You might mentally time travel and figure out why my action figures were advising us to have courage. I never dreamed of all the ways I’d need it in the intervening years. This is why I don’t think any of us really wants to see into the future. It would be too daunting.

Courage!


Bella, Edward, Katnip (first sighting in almost two years!), Lil Eddy Redux (because Kari has the real Lil Eddy), Lestat, and Angelica are shown with their new friend, HC. She looks happy, but the others look so serious. They must have some tough battles ahead. Courage, my little friends!

(You can’t see it in this photo because it’s too small, but as I was photographing this crew, I realized the word on the piece of art over the shoulders of Lestat and Angelica is “courage.” Nothing like having a theme handed to you!)

Every now and then…

“I don’t get it. I’ve been on this adventure for over a year in Earth Time. I’ve been to galaxies far, far away, Wonderland, Middle Earth, the Firefly ‘verse, and who knows where else as I’ve defied all I know of the space/time continuum. I’ve picked up a sidekick and a sidekick’s best friend. I’ve fallen into the pages of literary masterpieces, popular fiction, Mad Magazine, and even the funny papers. I’ve had conversations with oversized crabs, sharks, dragons, and an octopus along the way. I still don’t know what the Giant Rabbit’s note meant: ‘The first part of your journey will be complete when you find Lil Eddy.’ I’ve been to water eddies and snow eddies and found nothing to explain what journey I’m on or what happens next.”

Cuddle: “Maybe you should turn around?”

John Riley: “Yup, Bright Eyes, I’m thinking you’re about to experience a total eclipse of the heart.”

The Adventures of Katnip: 58

Laissez les bons temps rouler!


The usual characters have company in wishing you all a happy Fat Tuesday! A special shout-out to Timmy, too: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! As you know, Timmy, you share this birth date with yet another character, my late mother.

In honor of my Pisces loves, everybody party like a fish! (I don’t know what that even means.)

The Adventures of Katnip: 57. Thanks, Greg, for the Mardi Gras props, and Mary for the backdrop.

Word for the day: pangram

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

That’s an English-language pangram, that is, a phrase that uses all twenty-six letters of the English alphabet at least once.

I never hear this phrase without thinking of my friend Larry from high school. We sat next to each other in typing class. Our tables were arranged in groups of two, and we had to pound the keys of our manual typewriters with the kind of force people use today only when software isn’t working correctly. The fox phrase was one we typed over and over to help us develop our keyboarding skills.

Most of the typewriters had blank keys so that we’d learn by touch and not sight, but my typewriter keys had the letters printed on them. Larry’s did not. My speeds were always faster than his. One day in the last seconds before Mrs. Jones called, “Begin!” on a typing test, Larry whispered, “I’d like to see how fast you’d type on a Helen Keller.” I laughed so hard I had to put my head in my arms on my typewriter to keep from disturbing the rest of the class. His speed was definitely faster than mine that day.

The Adventures of Katnip: 53