This week has been busy; one of my closest friends got engaged, as well as had a birthday, Scott and I celebrated 15 years of marriage, my son had a complete meltdown about middle school and my agent asked me to revise a not-dead-yet manuscript.

Whew!

So I have been hunkering down and trying to Get It All Done, which means I have been going without as much leisure time reading, watching British dramas and sleeping (hate that one!).

There are some things, however, without which I will not do:

–Coffee (the picture of me is when I am pointing to where there is no coffee at a conference a few years ago. My expression says it all).

–Playing Scramble 2 on my iPhone. I like playing until I place in the top 3, which doesn’t take long on off hours. During peak times, it never happens–I’m just not good enough.

–Twitter. I love interacting with friends there, and I usually get book recommendations, too.

–Exercising. I’m trying to work out five times a week (the summer was unusually weighty for me, and I am too cheap to buy new clothing).

–Fun errands–yes, they exist. A couple of days ago, I took my bike to Sunset Park, the Chinese section of Brooklyn, where I bought a ginormous container of soy sauce for less than $4. And more sambal oelek, a necessity for our spicy-loving house. Then yesterday I headed the opposite direction to an artisanal cheese shop, where I got three different types of nifty cheese to pair with Pinot Noir or Syrah. Fun errands do tend to be food-related.

So if you had to pare everything down to the necessities, what would be the necessary frivolities you’d keep in your schedule?

Hello all!

No, do not adjust your computers; it is Wednesday, which is normally the day Carolyn Jewel posts here, but since she actually owns cats, she posted on Friday to allow me to find a topic that wouldn’t include bemoaning the fact that I can’t have cats (or dogs, for that matter) due to ferocious allergies (that was not a bemoan, just a statement of fact).


So today I wanted to talk about some of my favorite fictional cats! Probably the first fictional cat I encountered was the Cat In The Hat, that sassy troublemaker created by Dr. Seuss. Because I am a worrier, I was always concerned that the kids and that destructive Cat wouldn’t get everything cleaned up in time before the mom arrived home. Of course, the Cat had powers beyond normal Cat-dom, so everything turned out all right. Whew.

Later on, I dove into Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, which stars the Cheshire Cat, one of the creepiest cats in literature. That smile! That sardonic wit! Gives me the shudders just thinking about it now. It probably didn’t help that my parents had the Annotated Edition, which attempted to explain why Lewis Carroll created the cat that way (yes, once again, super-egghead parents freak Megan out).

I met Catwoman in Batman, and have to say, is there anything more seductive than Michelle Pfeiffer in that latex suit? Whoa. And when she acts all feline, it’s devastating (just ask my husband!). Holly Golightly‘s companion in Breakfast At Tiffany’s is a cat as careless as Holly is, only Holly actually takes responsibility for her pet.

In Jim Butcher‘s Dresden Files series, Harry Dresden lives with a 30-lb. cat named Mister (I would not say Harry owns Mister, nor that Mister owns Harry; it is a reciprocally beneficial relationship). Mister is a fantastically written cat, which is to say disdainful, proud and clearly opinionated.

But probably my favorite cat is the the feline in The Cat Returns, a film by Hayao Miyazaki. The Cat, voiced by Cary Elwes, is charming, rogueish, clever and witty. Swoon. PLUS he saves the day for the heroine.

Yay for fictional cats! If you could own any fictional cat, which would it be?

Megan

So last week I wasn’t able to snag enough Wifi to fuel my Friday post, and this week–I’m posting on my iPad, because I did what I thought was a good deed–cleaning my iMac keyboard–and ended up now unable to type anything on my keyboard. Bleh.

Jane Austen never had these kinds of problems.

So later today I will be venturing to the Apple store, where I will buy a new (and definitely clean) keyboard, which thankfully isn’t so costly as to be Held Over My Head in future days (as in . . . ‘yes, you could get the foie gras, only–well, we did have to buy that keyboard ’cause you messed it up’).

But meanwhile, I have been writing, and writing a story that is a bit unusual for me, in that the heroine is quiet, elegant, aware of her beauty and has a calm poise I wish I could emulate. And in another story, my heroine is shorter than me (about 5’2″), thin and waifish-looking, rather like Ellen Page (and I tried to find a pic to add in for visual interest, but I don’t know how to save photos to the iPad to insert into posts. Another big ol’ gah from me).

I am nothing like either of these women, and writing them is a bit of a stretch, since my heroines are usually self-deprecatingly witty. Like me!

The heroes I’ve always been able to step outside of myself to write for the obvious reason. But the women, and their nuances, are harder to get a handle on. I’ve never been elegantly beautiful, or short, or thin; of course, those are all external attributes, but they definitely shape how the inside ends up, too. Entering a room when you know you’re stunning is very different from entering wondering if anyone will notice you, or if you will be relegated to the other side of the punch bowl.

It is, however, kind of cool and freeing to step outside of yourself for a moment, even just to wonder what it’s like to spy a cookie and not immediately think of your mid-40s pooch.

Writing is kind of like acting, in that you have to get into someone else’s skin to understand them. I bet a lot of us writers are just introverted actors who decided to stay within themselves to create their art–I know when I was little, I wanted to be an actress, not an author (I played Dorothy in “The Wizard Of Oz” because I had dark hair and could sing “Over The Rainbow.”)

I realize I am meandering, and for that, I blame the different posting scenario, the stress about the damn keyboard, and the busyness of the week. But who am I kidding? I’m like this all the time. So anyway, if you could step inside someone else’s skin for one day, whose would it be? Is there a character whose internal motivation you can never understand?

And thanks for dealing with me this nutty day.

Megan

Don’t tell my son, but–I’m looking forward to school beginning again September 8th.

See, right now, my son is at Camp Mom, which means he’s with me All Day. THE ENTIRE DAY. I love the guy, but there’s only so much Naruto, Yu-Gi Oh, One Piece and Deathnote plots I can comprehend (my son likes manga. A lot.)

And although there are pockets of the day where I can write, theoretically, it’s awfully hard to get into the groove when you might be asked to unearth snacks or locate a clean pair of shorts, or something.

So–despite my doing great while in Minnesota, I haven’t touched writing since I returned to Brooklyn.

Before then, however, we are heading to the Jersey Shore (where I definitely won’t be writing!), where I can sit on the beach slathered in SPF 50+ and read. Bliss!

And I am hoping to fit in some last-minute summer treats, such as frozen custard on the boardwalk, chilled chardonnay on the deck, a frothy novel that I’ll forget five minutes after reading The End, tank tops, flip-flops and this summer’s best pop song (Katy Perry‘s “Teenage Dream” has not left my head since I first heard it).

What are your favorite summer treats? What are you doing before the onset of fall?

Megan

PS: The guy is the actor from the “Teenage Dream” video. Rowr.

As we do every summer, my son and I are in Minnesota for two weeks visiting relatives and he’s doing sailing school (I almost wrote ‘saline’ school, which would be quite a different thing entirely, wouldn’t it?).