Jesus GOD Usans are single-minded.
I'm watching ABC World News. It's Bastille Day, maybe that's why ABC noticed the Tour de France at all. The newscaster said, "Lance Armstrong had a harrowing day in the Tour de France today. He had to swerve out of the road because his closest competitor crashed right in front of him!"
The competitor, who apparently has no name or country, might be out of the damn race with road rash at the least, but poor Lance! he had to swerve!
I love cycling, don't get me wrong. I know next to nothing about it other than that male cyclists shave their yummy, yummy, yummy, and did I mention lickable, legs. Is there something else to know?
Anyway. Years ago I pointed this out to CLH: "A plane crashed in India today with 400 aboard. Three Usans were killed." Three hundred ninety-seven other people don't matter at all, apparently. Some time later CLH found and sent me a cartoon illustrating just this concept, with a penguin newscaster showing some sort of catastrophe among polar bears saying, "Luckily, no penguins were killed."
She named her cat Kitty, which is unusually lacking in imagination for her, but of course Kitty has multiple nicknames such that the actual name is only for show (cf. Blake, Buddy).
I love my sister because she has got bored with calling Kitty "Lambchop" and has moved on to "Choppage of Lamb."
It was 94 today. Do I remember accurately from childhood that it was seldom in the 90s in Connecticut, that humidity not heat made summer hellish? Or did it often get that hot there? Anyway, 94 here is a reasonable temperature as long as you do sensible things like loll about in the shade of a large tree with a pitcher of ice water and a book or eighteen months of a new journal to read. It is not so good to drive in, though if your father's birthday is Friday and you have not yet motivated to acknowledge it by post that's a good reason to get in the damn car and go shopping.
It is now 8:30. It's still over 80, but in a sundress I had no idea still fit (though I doubt it suits me as well now as it did in 1989 when I bought it), sitting on the porch with Blake in his cage on the swing beside me, I am perfectly comfortable.
It is, in fact, a beautiful evening. The neighbor with the golden retriever and the basset hound (my new snow-measuring unit, you remember) strolled by and I greeted her (yes, I know her name in addition to her dogs'). A new father (well, new to human fatherhood, he's had Sam the lab since we moved) has gone by too. I congratulated him--we passed their house on the way back from the Arts Festival just as his mother-in-law arrived with flowers, is how I knew the baby had been born--and he invited me to drop by and meet the baby, but that's got to wait for seven weeks at least: new babies unnerve me and they're not cute enough to bother about. The kids in the rented house passed as well, with their shrunken golden retriever. I don't know their names, the kids' or the dog's. The dog looks like its legs were shot off in the war and its paws sewn onto several inches up, it's adorable. There was also a three-year-old on a trike, but I have my priorities.
Long summer twilights on the porch swing.
But if my other neighbors water their new sod again, well after the permitted period of daily-for-two-weeks-after-planting, I will have to spank them.
Later. Here returneth the golden retriever and the basset hound and their human, in their typical end-of-walk pattern: the retriever trotting out ahead, bounce bounce bounce, the hound trailing well behind, lope lope lope.
It's dark now. Actually it's not, but it's dark enough that Blake is scared. In we go.
Five hours ago when I got home Blake begged for Vito. He loves the reading chair, which is unfortunate since his favorite activity on said chair is foot-wanking, which is quite tiresome as well as ticklish. Also there was important television-watching for me to accomplish, hence the ABC News story above, and not to forget the "Friends" reruns I might watch even if RDC were home if the reruns were worth his whining and undisguised disgust. (But this week? is the pilot. After that I might be done. I hope.)
At 7:30 when I emerged from the basement hoping the earth's surface had cooled, I brought Blake outside. This he certainly preferred to the basement (he's chewed away almost half of his--formerly my--hatbox, so he doesn't have a Fortress of Solitude so much as a Half-Shell in which you might find the Boston Pops), but it still wasn't Parental Contact.
Closer to 9:00, it was darkening and so we came into the light, child. (Fact: I have never seen all of, or even most of, "Poltergeist.") Only then did I settle into Vito. I myself prefer Vito toward the end of Blake's day, when he's more into snuggling than wanking. And so, indeed, he just spent the last hour plus having his head pet and snuggling into my neck. Only when I disturbed him by moving my left arm to type instead of read did he realize, whoa, bedtime, and scrabble across to my right shoulder, the one closer to his cage. It is, after all, 10:19, and a cockatiel needs his beauty rest.
So does his mother, but first I had to say, blissful hour of gently stroking a cockatiel with my chin! No wonder my blood pressure is nearly negative: buddy-cuddling. I should rent him out to the hypertensive.
10:58. The sun set more than two hours ago. I should emphasize that I have listened to my swamp cooler on the outside, and it's no louder than a box fan, before I say I loathe the neighbors. If they--and not to be too outlandish here--say, opened a window once in a way, they wouldn't need a fucking air conditioner, let alone one that rattles on the 2x4s propping it up. But they finally turned it off.
(It only ran for an hour that I'm aware of. But damn, that thing is ten times louder than the sun.)