The psychology of the book's characters is beyond anything in any novel I can remember. Because of novelistic conventions, I had a guess where each character would end, but the conversations and justifications and philosophizing that brought them all to their ends of their ropes I had no hope of foretelling. I can see why it is a favorite of Egg's.
I talked to my mother today for the first time since I left Connecticut two weeks ago. She asked what we were doing this weekend so I told her how I had intended to paint the porch swing but discovered, while scraping it, that it's painted in oil, which I've never used before at all and we don't own any of, so that put the kibosh on that project and I cleaned out the fridge instead, and RDC put the swamp cooler to bed for the winter. She asked what a swamp cooler was and I briefed her. I asked her in turn what she'd been up to, and she told me about a painting project and about planting a slew of bulbs, and about attending her aunt's funeral. All of these things I already knew about, but listened to again anyway, because that's how it goes.
She asked, after her description of the services, "Did I tell you that Aunt G died?"
"Mom, I was there the day of her funeral, remember?"
"Well...," she thought back. At the start of the call, after the usual weather opening--rainy and humid and warm there, cool and brightly sunny and perfect here--she asked, "You brought the good weather back with you?" Now she said, "I do remember that you were here for the best weather of the year..." so I prompted, "I got home just as you were leaving and you wanted me to come with you?" This she did not remember.
Does she really not remember? She remembers that Aunt G died and that she went to her funeral, but does she really not remember my [lack of] involvement? Or is this her memory-block, applied because she would prefer not to recall my lack of involvement? Honest question here: does she truly not remember, in which case no wonder she considers my lingering responses "dwelling," or is she being coy?
RDC suggests she probably honestly doesn't remember, "because how many times has she asked you, and have you told her, what a swamp cooler is?" Yep.
She also asked how the garden's doing, so I told her that we're so overrun with yellow squash that I was thinking to make bread from it. Yellow squash bread should follow, according to the grocer's baker, a pumpkin rather than a zucchini recipe because its texture is more like the former; however, the pumpkin bread recipe says to cook the squash first, too much effort, so I just foisted it off on Babushka instead (except I said "our poor elderly neighbor who's always glad of our extra produce," since I didn't expect her to remember Babushka's name). She said that she had lots of zucchini bread recipes and would I like her to me them? I said, "No, thank you, because, as I just said, it needs a pumpkin not a zucchini recipe and that I gave it away anyway."
You would think that knowing she doesn't remember things not only two weeks past but just two sentences past would make it easier for me to cope with her, would enable me to adjust my expectations of her actions and responses. Apparently, however, I continue to be unwilling to cut her any slack. As, in fact, she cannot cut me any, disappointed in my appearance, skills, and choices as she is. But probably she just forgets who I am, so that the presence in her life of someone whom she misunderstands and disapproves of so thoroughly continually surprises her by her [mine, that is] failure to conform.
Later: And the fact that my mother cannot expend the effort to remember such a rare occurrence as a visit home is, damn it, reasonable cause for resentment.
This is, of course, the real reason I don't use the webcam that often. How many pictures of a yawning cockatiel does anyone need? At least 12. Note the turns, trying to find the side of my leg from which the tip of his tail will not touch the chair. Note (row one, second picture) the scratching-the-head-induced yawn. Note that the more open the beak (the later into the yawn), the greater the distance between feet and head as the head tries to capture the yawn.
More than 12: in this particular yawnfest, I snapped the cam 30 times. My response time and that of the cam are poor, so I didn't capture all thirty yawns. But I got to watch them, OMFB, so yours is the poorer existence.
Did you start yawning at the sight? Or at least by reading the word "yawn*" so many times? I am extremely susceptible to catching yawns, even cross-species, even in print. That would make me the sucker, not y'all.