brainylady

We're moving! In a week or two, Bill and I will no longer live with roommates. Instead, we will live in our own rooftop apartment! Most apartment buildings in Taipei are four or five stories tall, with one apartment on each floor, and many have an apartment built on part of the roof. For us, the trade-off for walking up five flights of stairs will be having a rooftop area that is even bigger than the apartment. Space is coveted here, since almost all of it is filled with people. Although every apartment has a small balcony, it is caged in for security purposes. So we are very excited at the prospect of rooftop dinners (and rooftop knitting), especially because there will actually be a breeze up there and on a clear day you can even see the mountains south of the city. One of the things I miss most about Canada is the space -- being able to see farther than 20 meters before your view is blocked by another building. Did I mention we're excited about the rooftop?

The only down side to moving is the Dingy Cat. We've been feeding a skinny cat on our street for a couple of months (and she eats a lot, so we think she has worms). She sleeps under cars or among the bonsais on our neighbours' roof. She's black and white, but the white parts are dull; hence, we've dubbed her Dingy Cat (a.k.a., Dingy Lady or just The Dinge). She knows our schedules now, so sometimes when I leave our building in the morning she is waiting at the front door, or she waits for me to come home and jogs along beside me, howling all the way. And she howls. If she doesn't howl at me when I come home, I know she's already howled at Bill and been fed. Anyway, we offered to keep buying her food and our roommates agreed to keep feeding her. But now we're thinking that we might bring her along to the new place. She's probably disease-ridden, but nothing that a trip to the vet wouldn't fix. So this is the question: do we bring The Dinge with us? And then bring her back to Canada next year?



This is Henry, the US$95 J. Crew dog. For god's sake, people! I wonder what Elaine would've written about this for the J. Pederman catalog: "The simple, essential, button-down shirt, cut superbly into perfect squares. Man's best friend, without the messes. Red, white, and blue. Overpriced. American. America."