I may cut my hairwrap off today. If not today, then probably by the end of the weekend. I've determined that I can only retain the beach feeling for a few days after I get home, at the most, maybe a week.

I came back with a sunburn, a hairwrap and a henna tattoo, wearing a cedar prayer bead bracelet, and it was still fairly warm here, so I still felt sort of like a beach bum. But then it got cold, and the henna tattoo wore off, and the bracelet was uncomfortable under long sleeves, and the sunburn started to peel and itch, and the hairwrap is beginning to annoy me with having to keep pulling it out from under my coat collar.

Vacation is pretty much over.

Of course, I get another one in about a month, and I imagine I'm fated to recreate the same scenario: hair wrap, fake tattoo, sunburn, funky jewelry, then come home to bleak mid-winter.

Pyewacket adores the dryer. Who can blame her? When it's full of just-dried clothes, it's warm and soft and fuzzy--the perfect place to take a nap. Unfortunately, I generally don't want her in there, since, depending on what clothes are in there, her taking a nap on them may render them unsuitable for wearing and I'd have to wash and dry them again, or I may have another load that I want to dry, and don't have time to wait for her to get bored with lying in there.

This morning I dried a load of clothes, and as soon as I opened the dryer, she jumped in. It was Bob's sweatpants, so I figured she wouldn't hurt them, and I didn't have another load going, so I left her in there. And as soon as I walked away, I heard Dinah jump up to the top of the cabinet. Normally, of course, the door to the laundry room is closed, so whenever it's opened, they're fascinated and can't stay away.

I know that, left to her own devices, she would eventually get down by herself, just like she got down off of Bob's dresser last night at 1:30. No, wait, that was Pyewacket up there at 1:30, and I got up and got her down--she lands so hard I'm always afraid she'll break a leg if she jumps down, and she almost never gets up there.

Dinah's excellent adventure was at 5:30, and I just turned over and left her up there. She gets down pretty efficiently--she sort of rappels by leaning over the top and putting her front paws down on the front of the dresser before she takes her back feet off the top. Pye just sort of head dives down, so I'd prefer not to let her find her own way down.

I know the cats were just making a statement this morning. Bob's been out of town for a couple of days and everything pretty much falls to pieces when he's gone--the cats get aggravated and go feral and so do I, to a certain extent. He always says that if he wasn't around to keep order, things would fall apart, I'd live like a pig, I'd have 70 cats, blah, blah, but I have to admit that he's probably right. He'll be home tonight and order will return to the world.

Anyway, so Pyewacket's in the dryer, and Dinah's on top of the cabinet, and Pye's perfectly content, but Dinah is mewing a pitiful little mew that says, "Oh, I made a mistake, I really don't want to be up here, well, I do want to be up here, or I did, but I'm not really sure if I can get down by myself, and oh, could you get me, please, but oh, wait, no, I really don't want you to get me, I'm perfectly find the way I am, so go away now."

I got the chair, and of course she scooted back to the back of the cabinet when I reached for her, but when I'd start to get back down, she'd come up to the front and mew again, so I just bulldogged up there and grabbed her. I put my face down and hauled her off, hoping that if I did get scratched, I'd manage to avoid it in the face. I just got a little bit of claws on the top of my head, no real damage.

In order to close the laundry room door and avoid her getting right back up there, I had to haul Pye out of the dryer, and when I bent down to look in, she was lying on her back, feet in the air, looking so adorable . . . of course, she wasn't quite so adorable when I reached in to grab her and drag her out. It reminded me of this Get Fuzzy cartoon. She was lying pointy side up.

Just a random rant--why do the people who write reader reviews at Amazon.com insist on giving away major plot points and even surprise endings? Is it to prove that they actually read the book? We believe you, okay? Don't they grasp the point of a review, which is to tell enough about your experience with the book so other readers can make an informed decision about whether they want to read it or not?

There are two reasons to write a reader review: to encourage other people to read a book that you loved or to discourage them from reading one that you hated. In either event, though, it's the person who hasn't read the book yet who should be able to make the decision. It isn't your place to write, "The reason I hated this book was because the author killed [main character] at the end," or "I really loved this book, and it totally surprised me when I found out that [main character] was actually the killer."

Leave a little surprise for me, okay?

Frankly, I don't generally mind knowing how books turn out, since I read for the pleasurable experience of reading, but telling me the surprise ending of a book that I intend to read does tend to spoil things for me. And another thing--"warning, spoilers ahead" doesn't work.

If you insist on writing about the endings of books, then find your own forum, like an online journal, for instance. Then you can write anything you want, and if you want to put in spoilers, then a spoiler warning is great, and I can go away. But aside from doing something dumb like slapping my hand across the screen when I see "spoiler ahead," there's not a lot of ways I can avoid seeing what you've written if I want to read what the person below you wrote.