Today started poorly and hasn’t much improved. My first sensation as I woke up was pain, and it took me a while to wake up enough to figure out that my head was the source of the problem. Well, I figured, I have nothing that needs doing this morning, so I’ll just curl up on the couch and wait it out.

Then, while I was waiting it out, the cat started crying and moaning and pacing, deposited his rather large breakfast on the kitchen floor, and then continued to cry and moan and pace for the next hour before sinking into pitiful sleep on the couch next to me.

So now, here we both sit, looking scruffy and feeling mildly miserable.

It started out innocently enough. My sister found a pretty dress online that she thought would make a great bridesmaid dress. The catch was, the designer doesn’t sell online, so we had to find a local distributor, which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that the only local distributor happened to be the scariest boutique in town, Gigi’s. Gigi’s has one display window up in a tower that looms over the store and in which they dress one mannequin in the one most outrageously over-the-top evening gown that they have in stock. This, they back-light as soon as twilight sets in so that the town can gaze up at the glowing outline of a gown that should really only be worn on runways and only by trained professionals.

Before we left, I changed into a cute top and brushed my hair. I considered putting on a skirt but realized I’d hate myself more for being that intimidated by the place than I would for walking into the boutique in jeans. So I went for jeans. Really cute jeans, though. Cute enough jeans that I could look any saleswoman in the eye and dare her, dare her to think less of me for owning jeans.

Pulling into the parking lot, my sister and I looked at each other, took a deep breath, and promised each other that this wouldn’t be so bad, and started slowly toward the crystalline doors of Gigi’s. Barely 5 feet from the car, my sister dashed back to retrieve the slip of paper on which she’d written the designer’s name and dress number of the dress she was looking for. Muttering “I hate myself,” she tore off the bottom of the paper on which she had written directions to J. C. Penny (where we were headed next) just in case she had to show that paper to a Gigi employee.

As it turned out, they didn’t have the dress she wanted. (We did, however, get within arm’s length of the hideous gown that was currently on display in the tower, and we even managed to sneak a picture of it while the saleswoman wasn’t looking… or near enough to hear our hushed giggles). Relieved to step back into the real world, where there’s dirt on the pavement and exhaust fumes in the air, we escaped to go find J. C. Penny.

Setting off into the snowy countryside, talking about the wedding, and singing along with the iPod, we found ourselves driving between two uncharacteristically hill-ish hills for this particular area. Most hills around there are of the gently rolling variety. These would have made for some exciting sledding. And on closer inspection, they would have made for even more exciting sledding because of the random pipes sticking up out of the ground. Pipes that seemed far too homogeneous and evenly distributed over the hills to make sense unless… unless these weren’t so much hills as landfills. That’s when the steady stream of garbage trucks that kept turning in up ahead of us started to make sense.

Laughing at ourselves, we continued on only to find that the first non-waste-management-related building after the landfill had a prominent sign reading “Metro Harvest Christian Church.” Priceless.

After all this, finding and settling on a pretty dress at J. C. Penny was sublimely anticlimactic.

Things are quiet here. Pippin and my parent’s new puppy are, for once, not engaging in a massive battle of wills (and contests of speed). My dad is doing something on his laptop (probably involving the database he’s been designing and tweaking), my mom is cooking (preparing for the Big Meal, which we’ll have tomorrow rather than today), my bother is sleeping with his homework splayed across his chest, and well… everyone in my family seems to be settled comfortably into quietness.

Well, everyone but the pets, that is. Their quietness qualifies more as watchful than comfortable. We thought at first that they might get along. Pippin sniffed Sophie’s ears and Sophie didn’t move. Pippin even won the first staring contest. Unfortunately, Pippin then ruined any advantage he might have had by running away. Running instantly branded him as prey, or at least the Best Squeak Toy EVER. Now they spend some quality time running flat-out through the house, skidding out around corners, and then growling at each other from either side of the barrier we’ve set up across the stairs. The rest of the day, the cat lurks upstairs, behind the barrier, and glares at anyone who approaches and disturbs his grand sulk. He remembers fondly the days when he had Toby trained to turn and look docilely at a wall whenever in the Grand Catly Presence. He’s also pretty sure that it’s my fault for not explaining his Grandness and Catlines to the shepherd mix pup that is now causing him so much anxiety.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue to revel contentedly in each others’ company and, during this lull, I will skim some of my favorite posts, sip tea, and think gratefully of the friendships that have sustained me through this year. I don’t think I’ve ever been as grateful for good friends as I have been recently, so I expect this activity to fill a good stretch of time.

Oh, and if you’re interested, here are some of the posts that I’m re-reading:

• I Just Can’t Win
• Mail Pattern Badness (which continues, by the way)
• For Health’s Vanity’s Sake
• “Terror” is spelled V E T in cat-speak (I still hate that vet…)
• And, because I’m still figuring this out, two posts about hyperempathy

Apparently, I am very nice. At least, that’s what people keep telling me. Which is good, I suppose. I mean, it’s nice to have people think you’re nice even when you didn’t work at convincing them of this.

But apparently there’s also a down-side. Not once, not twice, but three times this week good friends expressed their fear that I’d be “too nice” to tell them if they were bothering me. Three times in one week is quite a trend, so I thought I’d just lay this out straight: I’m not that nice.

I know it can be hard to tell the difference between polite conversation carried on for the sake of not hurting feelings and real conversation carried on for the sake of pure enjoyment of another person’s company. Goodness knows I worry all the time that my friends just put up with my conversation because it’s easier than telling me to go mind my own business and leave them in peace. I suppose this is just part of being human. So in the interests of clarity, here are two questions to ask yourself if you think I might be merely putting up with you:

• Do I initiated conversations with you that aren’t just work related?
• Do I tell you when I’m miserable or mad?

If either of these is true, I like you enough that I’m not just being polite. It’s that simple. You probably don’t know that these are hallmarks of great affection because you’ve never seen anything different from me, but they are. I’m usually pretty passive and don’t volunteer much when I’m just being nice (which, again, you wouldn’t know, never having experienced that).

Occasionally, I’m not in the mood to talk even if I normally enjoy your company. When this happens, I’ll say so. I promise.

The various living things in this household spent the evening in wildly divergent ways. These are broken down by species as follows:

Homo sapiens:
Very little movement was observed. Television and laptops seemed to serve as the primary points of interest, particularly Masterpiece Theater and FriendFeed (which was refreshed at astonishing rates throughout the evening).

Felis F. catus:
Perhaps the most active member of the collection, this animal alternately chased bugs, demanded food, ran from place to place for no apparent reason, took several baths, schemed to acquire a rubber band (and was thwarted), and splashed water from its dish all over the floor (again, for no apparent reason).

Harmonia axyridis:
Though uninvited to the gathering, this species exhibited few inhibitions, though it is decidedly the most clumsy of the three species. Not understanding glass, it flings itself against the windows in an apparent attempt to rejoin its brethren out of doors. (It should be noted that the Homo sapiens would also prefer that the Harmonia axyridis would rejoin its out-of-doors brethren, though the Felis catus enjoys the current state of affairs.) After dark, this species spent the majority of its time knocking about within the lamp-shades of the lighted lamps, causing a perpetual tapping sound that goaded the Felis catus to ever more energetic attempts to leap several feet into the air. Amidst all of this, the Homo sapiens continued to refresh FriendFeed.

Further investigation is needed to determine the causes and extent of the FriendFeed obsession.