I woke up at 6:00 this morning with my head full of ideas; I laid there and tried to go back to sleep, but finally decided it was futile and went ahead and got up, and wrote. I got quite a bit done. I do much better early in the morning than I do late at night. Last night I sat up late and tried to write, and it made me very grumpy, as Bob can attest. I should probably try getting up an hour early in the mornings and writing, although the chances of that actually happening are probably pretty slim . . .

Dinah hasn't jumped up on top of the laundry cabinet in a long time, so I've become lax about shutting the door when I'm not actually standing there.

I had opened the doors, and opened the washer, then gone upstairs to get a load of laundry. When I got back downstairs, Dinah was on top of the cabinet. Cats are so amazing--that's what? Like a five foot vertical leap? Amazing.

Of course, she can't get down, but that's beside the point.

And, of course, she could, and would, if left to her own devices, but I had visions of her jumping down and ending up behind the drier and ending up having to pull it out. So I went and got a chair and stood on it and tried to reach her, but she moved farther back so I couldn't grab her. The last time she did this, she tried to get down by standing on the clothes rod, and then I was able to grab her.

Bob got home fairly shortly after all this started, and he got up on the chair and got her by the scruff of her neck and got her down. I guess it's like any room where the door is normally closed--they love the downstairs half-bathroom, which is always closed--any time I go in there, they both rush to come in, too, and explore.

The laundry room is fascinating to them, too. Pyewacket has taken to running whenever she hears the drier go off, and as soon as I open the drier door, she jumps in, curls up and closes her eyes, hoping I won't disturb her. Depending on how late it is and how much of a hurry I'm in, I usually let her lie in there for a little while before hauling her out. Right now she's sleeping on top of the drier, and Dinah is asleep in my chair, or I'd go be sure the doors were closed.

I'm not sure what all this head bobbing was about. It might have had something to do with the fact that the ceiling was so close to the top of the cabinet, and she couldn't sit up straight; she reminds me of Snoopy doing the vulture impersonation on top of his doghouse.

I actually did some Christmas shopping today--I went to Borders and there's a Marshall's in the same shopping center, so I did a quick run-through and ended up finding things for my sisters and my sister-in-law and my mom, and something for Bob, and Christmas cards with Abbot Handerson Thayer's 1887 painting, Angel, on them.

I also went to the library (I turned in the damaged CD version of The Breaker and told them that one of the CDs wouldn't play, and coincidentally they had gotten in the other copy that I had requested, and had been holding it for me, so now I'm going to be able to finish listening to it), and when I checked out my books, the librarian said, "These will be due in three weeks, which is, oh my God, December 1!."

Yup. Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away, my birthday is exactly two weeks away, we leave for Florida in slightly less than a month, Christmas is about six weeks away . . . and it will be 2002 before we know it.