Well, I am The Lovely One (TLO). At Ryan’s urging, I have agreed to do a weekly posting. In each posting, I will discuss one sublime event in the week and one ridiculous event in the week. I am sure it will be easy to find many examples of the latter, but the former may be more difficult. So, let’s start with the ridiculous.

Our wonderful, black cat, “Vuvuc” aka “Wooly,” provides us with many exemplary examples of the ridiculous on a daily basis. However, recently, it has done something particulary strange and somewhat grotesque. A long time ago, we gave up buying cat toys for Vuvuc. Our cat makes its own fun. It usually involves biting or swatting me in the morning, meowing at birds through the window, or throwing its body against closet doors in vain attempts to open them. The other day, it found a long piece of string on the floor. Instead of merely playing with the string, it decided to eat it. Hearing the cat making strange noises, Ryan went to investigate and found about an inch of string hanging out of its mouth. I advised Ryan to pull it out, thinking that there wasn’t much more. Ryan started pulling and pulling and pulling and what emerged was at least sixty centimetres of soggy string. Yuck. I love Vuvuc dearly. He is, at times, a wonderful cat. However, on this occasion, he was the epitome of ridiculousness.

My sublime event originated on my 15 minute walk from the bus stop to work. Every day, I pass by this little shop. I have never gone in and have a vague impression that it sells floral and gift items. In the window of the shop, there are a variety of stone wall plaques facing the passerby. I walk fairly quickly and am often quite unobservant about my surroundings, especially as I am listening to my discman at a high volume and wear sunglasses whenever possible. Yet, one of these plaques had a saying on it which struck me, “Oh, the person that I could have been.” With a grim smile, I have often thought that this summed up my rather dissatisfied impression with myself. This week, however, I decided to stop and have a closer look in the window of the shop and find out who this quote was attributed to. When I looked at the plaque, I realized that I had always misread the saying. It actually says, “It is never too late to become the person you could have been” (George Elliot). This was an epiphany. A truly sublime moment in which I discovered that perhaps my perception of myself also needed revision.