House:
Garden
Errands
Kinwork and Lisaism
Reading:
I don't know yet what I lost or what can be recovered. The worst thing is digital photographs. Most people probably could resend whatever pictures they've sent, but I hate to ask, having lost them through my own stupidity. The other thing is the additions and corrections to my address book that happened during year-end card-swapping.
Merp.
So. Saturday we took everything out of the kitchen (and the house) except the fridge, and moved the dead fridge out from the basement; Sunday we hurled money at Home Depot and CostCo; Monday we moved the working fridge from kitchen to basement, and sealed the kitchen off from the rest of the house, mostly. It has three doorways: one, to the sunroom (where the dishwasher pines for me), which is the house's spleen? gall bladder? the one that's nice to have but you can do without? is sealed, but needs to be breached once. because the bills are in there. Two, the dining room doorway, is entirely taped and sealed: no construction dust in the finished parts of the house. Three, to the back landing, is taped on the top and one side. It is strange to have to go to the kitchen from the dining room by way of the basement and two flights of stairs, front and back, but we will survive.
Our "kitchen" is now the back of the basement. The back of the basement has been a workshop for some time: it has a long countertop over four cupboards and an open area with a sawbench and a toolbench and my bike, narrow shelves in one corner, cut to fit around plumbing, a fridge in another corner, a watercloset, and tub-and-sink room.
I laid some planks over the tub, making space for a dishdrain and paperplates. I've been pretty good (it's Day 4) about scraping dishes into the trash and washing them immediately after I use them, but we're not going to use a lot of dishes: mostly Blake's, since paper ones don't hang in his cage right. The microwave's at the shelved end of the long counter, the coffee grinder and the toaster. I might dig out the popcorn popper too. We had used the shelves as yet another pantry, for warehouse-size purchases of Pellegrino and craisins and soy milk, but now they're primary storage. The workshoppy element means that we might have sawdust in our food, but that's good bulky fiber.
The cabinets are due March 25, and today They said they would like to install them the week after they arrive. That means all the wiring and plumbing and plastering and painting has to happen between now and March 18, when RDC's nephew, mother, and her husband arrive for several days. The water plumbing is, supposedly, not a huge hairy deal, and the gas plumbing can wait, if it has to, until after the cabinets are in place, since the range, not a cabinet, will be in front of the gas. The plastering is scariest to me partly because we've never done it before and mostly because, since it doesn't involve forces that could burn or blow up the house, I'm going to be doing it.
After the cabinets, They have to measure for the countertops, and I have no idea how long the wait will be between template and installation.
Sometime in between all this we will coarse-sand the floor, install a ventilation hood and range, repair the ceiling, rip out and replace the window frame, install track lighting on the ceiling (yet not remove the glarey recessed floods, a design duplicativeness that I am not One with) and build a new windowsill (extra wide for cockatiel pleasure). After the cabinets and counters are in place (and the new sink undermounted, as we are nothing if not slaves to trends), They will be gone, and we'll fine-sand and otherwise finish the floor. And then ruin it by rolling in a new fridge.
Last night RDC suggested that since we will be at this point On a Roll, we should commence with the bathroom. Ha!
My second Haruki Murakami and probably not my last: I'll probably read The Wind-up Bird Chronicles too. Norwegian Wood is supposed to be his most accessible, though. It was a lot less, as in not at all, as surreal as Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World News. The final page threw me, but it does work...kind of.
This happened three weeks ago, the day before my iBook blew a gasket. I was reversing out of a parking spot at work when I noticed a couple of crows on the nearly flat roof on the building next door. Because of its shallow angle, the roof had kept the night's snow; because of the lip on the roof, it had kept much of its melted snow as well. The crows were bathing in snowmelt, and being as goofy as any other bathing bird.
I probably thought of it now because today RDC sent me a picture of a freshly showered buddy doing his drowned dragon impression. I should have showered him a few days ago: he's been smelling especially good. Intern asked what he smells like. Dusty, I said, but not like a dusty room--like a dusty cockatiel. Soft and sweet and...dusty. The dustier the better, but the dustier the more Blake wants a shower. You can distinguish, or we can, between his "I'm bored because you're in the shower and not paying attention to me" yell and his "I'm attracting your attention to the fact I want a shower" yell.
These crows probably didn't get as silly as Blake. I didn't see them turn nearly upside down with their heads between their feet and their tails in the air, but that's probably hard to do on a flat surface like a roof instead of on a finger perch. But they were very silly. They slid the short slope, flapped heavily back up, and slid down again; they fluffed their feathers out, making themselves look much bigger but not for the reason a cat might--to intimidate with size--but to get water deep into their plumage; they hunkered into the slush and probably would have appreciated a rubber ducky.
RDC was on his way to Amsterdam--one reason I succumbed to the convenience of driving--so I couldn't call and tell him about it. Instead I called Tex and made him look out his window, whereupon the crows immediately flew off, one to the lamppost right in front of the building. I told him to look to his left and the tracks on the roof. "Those are theirs?" he asked. He wasn't as delighted with the spectacle as I was, since he didn't witness it and isn't a bird person, but he understood why it was interesting and funny and enjoyed my pleasure in it. So today I made him (and Intern) look at the picture RDC sent me of the freshly showered buddy.
Yesterday we went to a first birthday party that, when we arrived, was a usual first birthday party--more adults than kids, including two fathers and their children without the mothers, which unfortunately is still worthy of note, because I travel in an enlightened crowd. Then the ratio flipped, and that was funner.
This was only the second time I have seen Gethen, and I am a huge fan. A pile of the cone-shaped birthday hats lay by the birthday cake, and I offered her one. She was uncertain. I modeled one, with difficulty since they and their elastic were child-sized, and said "how about it?" Her look was one of superb disdain, and I howled with glee (probably confirming her opinion of me as a poorly haberdashed loon).
Now that's a day. It's spring, though it will be winter again before summer. I cut down last year's growth in the front garden, raked out leaves and spiny shrubbery, peeled back groundcloth, scratched Yum-Yum Mix into the soil around each plant, and remulched. It's lovely and green and refreshed now. I cut down the peony skeletons, moved a winter's worth of compost into the vegetable garden, shoved all the front garden debris into the newly empty compost bin, and watered the cherry tree. Also I did what I should have done from the vegetable garden's first winter: covered it with landscaping cloth. It's black and water-permeable, less conspicuous and better for the soil than the blue plastic tarp I have previously used. And the air was clear and warm enough for the sheets to dry in only an afternoon, instead of needing to be halfway machine-dried and then line-dried for a full day only to smell more like city than like sun.
Tonight I am going to choose plants to finish the north front garden and figure out how to fill in the north side of the house.
Don DeLillo's prologue and epilogue are among the best writing I have ever come across, in any period. To place J. Edgar Hoover, Jackie Gleason, and Frank Sinatra in a box at the Dodgers-Giants 1951 pennant game encapsulates the entire mood of the country on a day of not only that miracle but also of the USSR exploding its first atomic bomb. Historically, I don't know if both events did occur on the same day; bookwise, the juxtaposition resonates.
I confess that I didn't entirely follow the plot of the bulk of the book: it is too long an audiobook for me right now, since I currently don't devote sufficient time frequently enough to listening. I believe, though, that this plot, and whose point of view, and that other plot, are secondary to what I did follow and appreciate: the vignettes and snippets of this American life, especially its seamy and seeming underside, in the second half of the 20th century. Pop art, the Cuban missile crisis, the New York blackouts, Yucca Mountain, the Zapruder film, Lenny Bruce, and the ruminations of someone standing in Freshkills landfill looking over his shoulder to where the World Trade Center is being built in the distance behind him.
That last made me gasp--Underworld was published in 1997--and the cover, in hindsight, is mournful too: the towers in the background, in fog, and in the foreground, sharper and darker, a church.
Now that I'm reading Ulysses and have just finished listening to Underworld and started War and Peace (unfortunately, the Constance Garnet translation, but I'd never read it otherwise so I'll deal, and didn't I just say that Underworld was too long? this is over twice as long), José Saramago seems a lot easier going. I opened The Stone Raft, sad and neglected for weeks, again, and read this:
"Deux Chevaux [Two Horses, either the name or the model of a car] crosses the bridge slowly, at the lowest speed permitted, to give the Spaniard time to admire the beauty of the views of land and sea, and also the impressive feat of engineering that links the two banks of the river, this construction, we are referring to the sentence, is periphrastic, and is used here to avoid repeating the word bridge, which would result in a solecism, of the pleonastic or redundant kind. In the various arts, and above all in that of writing, the shortest distance between two points, even if close to each other, has never been and never will be, nor is it now, what is known as a straight line, never, never, to put it strongly and emphatically in response to any doubts, to silence them once and for all."
Blake is eating carrot.
Every batch of buddy chow includes one bag of Bird's Eye Mixed Vegetables (corn, peas, string beans, carrots). He regularly hurls from his dish the stupid beans--although he likes fresh beans from the garden. The carrots, being smaller, he usually eats around without hurling. I know he likes carrots, occasionally raw ones because of their gnawability, absolutely carrot tops when they are available (for the same reason he likes peacock feathers), but I've never seen him eat a piece so meditatively and thoroughly. He usually gets his beta carotene from yam.
I don't suppose I saw a lot of photographs of other black Labs during my dogs' lives, before the web. Photographs of Labs in books are of show dogs who don't wear collars so much that they don't have impressions in the fur around their necks, of posed show dogs, full face or perfect profile, very few snapshots. Of course I easily can distinguish Belle from Sagi from Shadow, not only because of my age and other time clues in the photographs but also because they were so different in body--puppy vs. lean adult vs. chunky all her life and eventually old enough to bearded.
No Lab I've seen on the web has looked like my dogs. I tell personality from movement, and even without that, only in still photographs, no smily, portly Lab bears more than general resemblance to my beloved Shadow. I suppose the fact that she was too chubby to sit straight and instead would sit on one leg (which must have exacerbated her hip problems) is a major clue in any photograph. I miss my dog.
Either I have been better trained to distinguish among dogs than among cockatiels, or cockatiels all look alike (at least all normal gray males). Lots of the photographs I see of other people's cockatiels look a lot like Blake. So seeing my little buddy eat carrot made me wonder if he had been swapped.
Nah. They don't all look alike. This one's ear patches are smaller than Blake's. This bird was supposed to be a cock but it turns out to be a hen. Her yellow is about as bright as it should be but the arrangement of her feathers makes her obviously not Blake, and I link to the photograph instead of the whole page because another photograph on the page is of a bappie with a...ruptured air sac. Simon is 20 and looks a lot like Blake, and though Bo on the same page doesn't look like a hen, she doesn't have enough yellow on her head (especially behind her ear patches) to look like Blake. Blue looks like Blake, but who would allow a parrot to perch on a fan that could cut its toes? though Izzie, on the same page, has more black in his beak. Now, Ivan looks like Blake, including the goofy smile. Oh, I can't continue to go through those pages--so many have such tragic stories of human stupidity, boiling water and Teflon fumes and open doors and careless treading. And several Google searches for permutations of normal gray cockatiel male turn up "lost" advertisements which is enough for me today.
It bears repeating that no matter their color, all cockatiels--all the healthy ones, I suppose, anyway--smell really good, which dogs don't; and naturally Blake smells the best. This I affirm being intimately acquainted only with Percy otherwise. When we adopted Blake one of the first things I did was sniff him, and the scent almost made me cry. It had been less than a month since Percy died, and I painfully missed that smell.
Lastly, you can tell I'm a sicko because I think these little dudes are cute.
(It helps to know that we emptied the kitchen the last weekend in February: appliances, counters, cabinets, all out. The room was empty for a day, and is now full of ladder and shop vac and various tools and bits of lumber.)
I emptied the two kitchen closets, bringing some stuff, like trail mix and the popcorn popper, downstairs to the temporary batterie de cuisine, and stacking most things in the sunroom to keep the dishwasher company. We need to get acrylic sealer for the shelves, which are removable for only one closet. The other will be a cramped job.
RDC cracked the window removing it from its frame Saturday, so today I brought it and another window, broken in other circumstances, to the...window fixing place. He will finish replacing the window framing on Wednesday.
This is a large-item pick-up week, so I brought out the countertops, but ony the countertops. RDC has to cut down the old cupboards with the Sawzall to make the debris more compact for either large-item or regular trash pick-up. And I still haven't called the city about the appliances, and when we're done with this we'll probably have enough paint cans to warrant a hazardous materials pick-up as well. The environment lurvs us.
The cabinet people say that the cabinets can be hung over the holes, since they are nibbles mostly, rather than canyons, so we can perhaps begin to paint this weekend. Or at least prime, if we can patch the hole from the fan in the ceiling and spackle the usual dents. And we have an installation date for the cabinets, yippee!
Thanks to Project Gutenberg, I am reading The Count of Monte Cristo. It's a good television book. Then I got to this bit:
"'And how did this despatch reach you?' inquired the king. The minister bowed his head, and while a deep color overspread his cheeks, he stammered out, --
'By the telegraph, sire.' -- Louis XVIII advanced a step, and folded his arms over his chest as Napoleon would have done."
Wha? This book begins in 1814. Though Dumas wrote it after Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1842, it was only three years afterward, which was only one year after the first complete line was laid between Baltimore and D.C.
12 March: Aha--thanks to Beth, the explanation I should have looked for. Dumas wasn't being prescient but describing Chappe's telegraph, which appears to have been a mechanical semaphore. Or I should say, the semaphore is a descendant of Chappe's telegraph, which surprises me. I would have guessed that the semaphore had been invented earlier, to complement or assist Europe's naval supremacy. But then, the longitude clock wasn't invented until well into the eighteenth century, and the semaphore is much less critical than that.
A Project Gutenberg text to while away slow periods. Um. Heavy-handed. The animosity between Messalah and Judah has less founding here than in the movie and latter's involvement in Jesus' mission is much more promiment.
With Mel Gibson's "Passion" in theatres, I was particularly interested in how Lew Wallace would treat Christ's last day. He might have sought to place the blame for the execution on the entire race of humanity by making the ridiculous number of three million witnesses Jews from everywhere, Libya, the Rhine, Egypt, still those who thronged to see him suffer and be debased were only Jewish. Eww, and maybe that three million was not supposed to represent the vastness of the human population but to be a census of all the Jews then living. Even Rome at its peak had only a million inhabitants. He does say that Pilate was inclined to be merciful but that Jesus wouldn't defend himself, which should allow the reader not to blame the Jews or Romans but know Jesus chose his fate.
When I saw the ballet "Romeo and Juliet," I thought it odd that Mercutio, however much more likeable in the play than either lead, took much longer to die than Romeo, Juliet, and Paris added together. There's something about dramatic tension, I suppose, but I am naughtily inclined and compared the word counts of the chariot race vs. the passion. And, okay, from "About three o'clock, speaking in modern style, the program was concluded except the chariot-race." to "And the race was won!" inclusive is 5,558 words, while from "There are certain chapters in the First Book of this story which were written to give the reader an idea of the composition of the Jewish nationality as it was in the time of Christ. They were also written in anticipation of this hour and scene; so that he who has read them with attention can now see all Ben-Hur saw of the going to the crucifixion--a rare and wonderful sight!" to "A tremor shook the tortured body; there was a scream of fiercest anguish, and the mission and the earthly life were over at once. The heart, with all its love, was broken; for of that, O reader, the man died!" is 7,306 words. So Wallace didn't pull a Prokofiev. Good for him.
I can't wait to get back to The Count of Monte Cristo.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. Somehow I forgot to put on my helmet when I left work and to notice until I got home, when its absence interrupted the automatic shedding of helmet and gloves. I'm in a quandary about how to get to work on Monday. I'll be aware of its absence and therefore in a lot more danger over the exact same route than I was today.
Yea! I can braid my hair again! Janelle cut my hair last week, taking off a half-inch but strategizing for growing it out. It was dreadfully shaggy, not having been cut since November and that cut being--immediately I left the salon--extremely cute and hugging my chin but nothing I could style on my own. It's been a year of various lengths from chin to collar bone and now I am certain I want at least collar bone. Previously she had cut it to be loose, for "movement," and this meant that although none was higher than my chin (the minimum for braiding) some bits were shorter than other bits and so short locks would stick out of any plait. Now, despite the recent loss of that half-inch, it is beginning to be all of a length.
It's not an attractive braid by any means, and cannot be braided off my scalp but ends at the nape in an elastic and another inch or two of leftovers, but I have missed plaiting my hair. I am too old for pigtails, and I don't like the center part that two pigtails give me and never mastered the part on a bias and diagonal pigtails thing anyway; so other than the small braid within loose hair, I have been unbraided for a year now, and I have missed it, the process, the result, the motion, the sensation.
I miss Granny too, but I do not require of myself to mourn forever. She's the one who taught me to braid to begin with, and I am glad to return to a braided life.
Once again, all books are one book (not really). Those bits of Underworld I liked least were those that reminded me of American Pastoral. In The Count of Monte Cristo, someone has had two attacks of some kind and knows he will not survive a third, because no one has. In War and Peace, vulturous relatives are waiting for someone to die. His German doctor says "Dere has neffer been a gase...dat one liffs after de sird sdroke."
Even if I've said this, it bears repeating that when I say "we," I generally mean the opposite of the royal we. I mean that RDC did it. That doesn't mean I don't do anything, though.
We rewired the kitchen to distribute the amperage more safely and sensibly, added a junction box in the attic to be wired eventually to another circuit in the breaker box, drywalled over holes we'd cut for the wiring and supports for the hood, patched the ceiling, decided to forego the track lighting for now because it was complicated enough to be affecting the timeline; swapped out the kitchen storm for the screen, emptied RDC's closet for attic access and rehung everything, primed both sides of the shelves--tricky because they're all slatted and prone to beading, not to mention requiring scraping and razoring of all the previous beading--and one side of the doors, swept out the kitchen (once), tidied up my study and the laundry room and the garage and the furnace room, did a lot of laundry, scrubbed the buddy cage, knocked together a couple of shelves to use my study closet space more effectively, read 90 pages of The Stone Raft (the dog showed up! its name hasn't been decided yet, either Faithful or Pilot), and listened to several hours of War and Peace. I did the things after the semi-colon. And we both went to Mezcal, a new restaurant! a good one! with atmosphere, and not nearly as low-rent as most of the stuff on our stretch of Colfax (such as the adult bookstore and arcade across the street)! that I like! that was hopping! and walked by a new, Climbing Tree be praised, bookstore; and we saw that a yoga studio is slated to open next to Witz coffee shop; and we watched "Holes."
Also I took two "West Side Story" breaks, half yesterday and half today, because Blake cannot help in the kitchen or with primer and was feeling quite neglected. The instant I sat back on my heels to gauge books on the bookshelf, he scrabbled from my shoulder to under my chin, clearly requesting snuggling and attention. This evening after his supper and some playing in his box, he returned to the under-chin spot and tucked immediately.
RDC's new headphones are amazing. I tried them once, and the sound quality was great, plus I heard no external noise at all. I saw RDC's mouth moving but heard not a damn thing besides Susan Tedeschi so assumed he was gaslighting me. He waved a bandana in front of Blake, who of course yelled, and then I believed. I could not use my iPod while scrubbing the cage so instead played "West Side Story," loudly, over the washing machine between me and the den and the jigsaw in the kitchen. RDC came downstairs after one tool or another while I jigged from here to there doing this and that. "What are you dancing to?" he asked, loudly over Robert Randolph or Moe or Umphrey's McGee or whatever he was listening to--all he could see was me prancing without aid of headphones. "The dance at the gym!" I replied, probably meaninglessly to him who, sadly, is not a "West Side Story" fan.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. And my legs just needed to wake up after their two months bus-walking: now I am back into my regular gears. Now the point will be to continue spinning in yet higher gears.
I read a child's comment about the Harry Potter books, that he loves them so much because there is more fun per page than in any other book. Tangentially, that's not true of the fourth and fifth, where pointless dialogue stalls action and defies logic even more than in the first three; primarily what I came here to say is that clearly that kid had never read The Count of Monte Cristo. Swashes are buckled in every sentence. It's great fun, and I love the language, formal and on its way to being archaic--unlike Harry Potter, malheureusement, whose influence is so vast that, as with Stephen King, I weep at the simplicity and stiltedness of its prose.
I have just got to a bit where the Count says someone has two strings to his bow, just as Leopold Bloom says of a woman he sees in the street. Because all books are one book.
Later...all books are one book: a chemist by the name of Flamel is mentioned, who I surmise is the alchemist Nicholas Flamel from Philosopher's Stone.
Last Thursday we went to Barbie and Sabrina's booksigning at the Tattered Cover. Besides being a really pleasant evening altogether--tapas beforehand at the Fourth Story and dessert afterward at Mel's, seeing Butterfly and Danger Kitty and Margaret and Spenser and of course Barbie and Sabrina, finally using a gift card for War and Peace and The Brothers K--it afforded a few minutes between tapas and signing to peruse the 85%-off table in the rear of the event space.
One title made me seize the book and hoot. I might have perused it more but I was actually speaking to people (and have I mentioned how much better I am feeling these days? Verging on confident even). What I gleaned was this: Lyme Disease and the S.S. Elbrus: Collaboration Between the Nazis and Communists in Chemical and Biological Warfare.
What an absolute wackjob Rachel Verdon, its author, is. First, the theory at all. Second, even aside from the mediocre design, the lack of copyediting on its very first page convinced me that Elderberry Books is a vanity press (and so it is). Third, one of her first premises, that Lyme Disease was allegedly new in the '70s, is nothing anyone believes. Fourth, even I could see through some of her rhetorical devices (paraphrase: Such and such happened in November 1963 and so was clearly part of the JFK assassination), and anyone could see through her paranoia (robber barons and the military-industrial complex targeted Glastonbury, Connecticut, unsurprisingly her hometown; also unsurprisingly she has had Lyme Disease). According to her, many neurological illnesses, such as Lyme Arthritis and multiple sclerosis, are the result of Mengele's experiments and shipped into the United States at the following ports: Portland, OR; New Orleans; New York; and Boston.
Elderberry claims "Rachel Verdon has been much in demand on national airwaves to discuss her blockbuster new book: Lyme Disease and the S.S. Elbrus. Read it for yourself and see what's got the nation's media in a lather." I'll get right on that.
Two 3.8-mile city rides.
Also, I saw my first robin. Denver has robins throughout the winter, but I've read that our winter robins come south from Canada, while our summer robins winter in Mexico or wherever. This was the first robin I've seen in my own yard this year, and therefore I count today as the first day of spring.
I scrubbed the pantries and the walls and trim around them. The water that started out bright green with TSP substitue wound up gray with the grease of years. Also the paint on the trim of the sunroom doorway came off under the brush, because whatever genius painted the entire upstairs gunmetal gray did so straight over glossy.
Also I painted one side of the removable shelves in semi-gloss. Blake had had a hard day, frustrated by being alone in the living room with the music while RDC cruelly worked in the kitchen. Also lots of the tracks were recorded live, the cheers and whistles and applause in which always churn Blake's blood. So he didn't stop yelling until I had finished scrubbing and showering and took him on my shoulder while I painted in the back of the den. Of course he wanted to help me paint, which really he can't do, so he had to yell some more. I emptied a bookshelf and put his box on it, which helped somewhat.
Last night I put away the year's correspondence. In the next few years all my rubber-banded bundles will expand into a third box, but not if I keep losing letters. One entire bundle is missing. I confess that once I threw out some people's stuff, years ago when I lived in small apartments and wanted to postpone expanding into two boxes and only people whose stuff I did not cherish and would never reread. But I would never throw out NBM's correspondence, so where is it? I figure I accidentally bundled her with someone else, which leads me to the daunting task of going through each bundle looking for incongruous handwriting.
I think the first piece I have from her is a construction paper heart, a Valentine from when she baked several huge (dinner plate-sized) chocolate chip cookies for her son and his friends junior year, followed by the occasional thank you and 15 years of Christmas cards. Damn.
One part of the project went well. I finally made a shelf (all hail Liquid Nails) so I can put the boxes across the depth of my closet instead of along the width, and I weeded out a lot of old job-search stuff and organized my writing and layout samples. That sounds like more than it is. My samples are the two magazines in which I have articles and a dozen or so books from Dot Org in which my name appears (in the acknowledgments, for designing graphics and doing layout). It's not much but it's all I have. And now it's tidier.
Two 3.8-mile city rides. In the morning I met another dog named Howie, this one adorable mostly because it was a five-month-old puppy, but fated by its all-too-common breed to be merely an ordinary dog in adulthood, whereas my coworker's Howie will always be cute, because a basset hound-dalmatian cross is just not something you see every day. Poor ordinary golden retrievers.
This one was cute while it lasted, of course. Passing its human and it as they walked, the puppy holding a stick in its mouth and prancing with delight, I called, "What a good stick! There's nothing like a good stick!" The human grinned and waved, and then they joined me as we waited for a light to change, where I learned his name and age and had my knee and paniers thoroughly investigated and got to pet some puppy ears.
On a recent commute I saw my friend and her Howie as they walked. She was on the phone with her mother so my cries of "Hi Mom!" and "Bye Mom!" bookended my fondling Howie's ears and kissing his goofy snout. The next day at work I apologized for invading her phone call and hoped her mother could understand how necessary it is to snuffle Howie whenever possible. Of course she could.
And that's why bike commuting is good: no one driving a car greets or smiles at strangers in other cars or waves at the old man walking his Highland terrier or the two elderly women on their morning constitutional or the young woman waiting at the bus stop or the fellow walking home from the coffee shop; but these are all my regular acquaintance now.
I regret reading the first 60 pages in dribs and interrupted drabs earlier this year. When I gave it better attention, it turned out to be as good as any thing else José Saramago has written. Of course. As with the others of his books that I've read, this concerns ordinary people to whom extraordinary things happen, things they don't understand but through which they try to get along and survive. In this, the Iberian peninsula splits from Europe down the Pyrenees--minus the Rock of Gibralta, which belonging to the U.K. remains in place--and floats, a stone raft, through the ocean.
There is also a dog, which marks his best books--the Dog of Tears in Blindness and Found in The Cave and here, Constant--if there was a dog in Balthazar and Blimunda or The Gospel According to Jesus Christ I don't remember it, and All the Names was good even without a dog.
Tuesday I scrubbed the east wall and the two closets, and this evening I primed the wall and the more complicated pantry, the one without removable shelves. A previous occupant nailed shelves in place, about a third of the depth of the 18-inch closet. This leaves very little space for someone to maneuver. I should have clipped my ponytail to my scalp and worn a bandana over that, but I'm almost 36 so don't mind the occasional white hair. It's really difficult to scrub primer off knuckles, especially chapped ones. So whatever, I'm leaving it.
Blake was mostly well-behaved, sad but resigned. I got home from work and the daily Home Despot run before 5 and didn't finish until 8:30--the kitchen is the only way I'll ever listen to War and Peace--and he kept me company in the kitchen in his cage, eating his dinner and preening and settling into his fugue state on one foot until nearly the end, when he yelled his boredom and frustration.
No more bored than I was. Good grief. Two-inch, four-inch, and twelve-inch (in an alcove on the left) shelves, some made of unfinished wood, all of which but the bottom with a visible underside. I kept seeing bits I had forgotten, and getting primer on me from all sides as I spiraled down the closet.
Ptooey, what a chore.
I started reading The Egypt Game to RDC last night. It is one of my earliest favorite books, maybe the first after Dr. Dolittle, who wasn't just a book but my favorite fictional character. And I think I learned about him from Mrs. Plimpton, my beloved second-grade teacher. She read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle aloud to us, I know, and, memorably, once an old-fashioned tale that had the word "bosom" in it.
After hearing Zilpha Keatley Snyder's name, RDC asked if the entire book was written in iambic trimeter.
Okay. Most important, Blake will probably be okay. But for a while he wasn't, and he is my little trooper buddy.
Saturday the 20th we worked on the house in the morning and in the evening picked up RDC's nephew, mother, and her husband from the airport. We drew pictures, went to the zoo, tried to figure out Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, stayed at Keystone for a few days (where we snow-tubed, skied, took a private ski lesson (me) and a group snowboard lesson (RDC2)), and toured a (non-cyanide) gold mine and panned for gold on the way home Wednesday 24th.
When I brought Blake to camp I told the vet we'd pick him up either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning. Nevertheless when RDC2 and I arrived Wednesday at 4:30 to fetch him, they hadn't trimmed his talons and wings yet. The vet techs did so while we waited, and, therefore, did it fast and, evidently, carelessly.
I noticed immediately that Blake stood on only one foot in his cage in the car, but we've occasionally nicked the quick ourselves and he has favored the affected foot for a few minutes and then been fine.
This time he was clearly not fine. He limped, putting barely any weight on his right foot. Especially after being three days at camp, he wanted to do all his usual buddy things, like walking the plank (the foot of the bed), prancing on the couch, and bowing, but he couldn't. He could not grasp with that foot, meaning he could stand on flat surfaces but not perch. Not bearing any weight on it meant that pooping was difficult and could not be done with proper ritual: he could not stretch his whole left side but only the left wing because he could not stand on his right foot, nor his right side but only that wing because he couldn't flex his leg back. Wednesday night, for the first time ever, we slept with him in our bed, on RDC's chest, because standing worked better than perching.
Thursday morning we arrived at the vet well before 8. Blake's doctor saw him after only a short wait and palpated the entire leg, from hip joint through the drumstick and each toe. He felt no bone damage and hypothesized soft tissue injury. He lent us an aquarium for a confined flat surface, recommended a tightly rolled towel as a soft quasi-perch with a greater circumference, and said if Blake hadn't improved by Saturday we should bring him back for x-ray. How anyone restrains a parrot for x-ray is beyond me, and happily it hasn't yet been necessary.
By Saturday, Blake could walk almost normally, and just before I called his doctor he lifted his bad leg over his wing to scratch his head. His appetite never wavered, which was his vet's other question. Today, he repelled up a towel on its hook, slower than usual and with a few false grips but all by himself; also he can bear his whole weight on that leg so as to scratch with his left foot, and to stretch the left side, and he can almost flex the right leg fully backward in the usual manner. He even roosted on only the bad leg, which must be a relief to his overworked left, though only for a few minutes. Tonight we might let him sleep in his cage like a bird instead of in an aquarium like a spotted gecko.
The biggest indicator that he feels better is that he has stopped being so clingy. He wants to trot and prance and go on expotitions, and he has done some singing in his box.
My best and dearest little gecko boy.
Somewhere in there we decided to refinish the kitchen floor. Thursday, besides coddling Blake, we sanded the floor with three different types of sander and three different grades of paper, sweeping and vacuuming and dusting after each step. (The family went to the Museum of Nature and Science.) Today we varnished it, and tonight we will tape resin paper to protect the surface during cabinet installation (tomorrow and maybe Tuesday), counter template-measuring, counter-installation, and appliance installation.
RDC2 turned ten while he was here, and the night before his arrival we pillaged the Tattered Cover. I had titles in mind--Holes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Tom Sawyer--good stories, compelling writing, accessible. Considering RDC2's reading level and randomly opening Tom Sawyer, I reluctantly decided against that. It's easier thematically and stylistically than Huck Finn but not yet easy enough. I don't know much about books for the 6- to 9-year-old set, which is realistically RDC2's ability and willingness, so a salesclerk recommended other titles: Enclopedia Brown, The Dragons of Blueland, Lost Treasure of the Emerald Eye, and--this was the biggest hit--The Day My Butt Went Psycho.
I broke out Encyclopedia in the car on the way up, and RDC2 did listen, which pleased me. I doubt I figured out many of the puzzles myself when I was eight, nine, and ten (but I liked rereading them and seeing what I missed). When we finished that book (the first), I tried Roald Dahl, who was somehow less immediately compelling. Also Holes has 50 whole chapters, but after seeing the movie even JHT wants to read it. I hope RDC2 reads at least Butt on his own.
My ski instructor said, about halfway through, that I was doing well. He didn't mean ski-wise necessarily but instruction-wise. He said, "By this time, most women are either yelling at me or crying." What men might be doing, I don't know. I should have called him on that, but I was too busy being glad to be better than I usually am at taking criticism.
RDC2's snowboarding lesson didn't go as well and he bailed. He wants to try skiing next time because snowboarding was so hard. His uncle and I and probably his instructors told him that skiing is harder to pick up than skiing, and all of us told him that part of his difficulty came from his dehydration, and that no, Sprite does not replenish your fluids well enough. He flat out refuses to drink water, and he would not drink the lesson's offered Gator-Aid because an instructor half-diluted it with water not to overwhelm his system.
My skiing day started out cloudy, so did I think of sunscreen? I did not. Did it stay cloudy? It did not. So besides becoming tubercular from sanding, I also had leprosy of the face. Hence the atypical apastiness in the photograph.
The mine tour--the Phoenix mine near Idaho Springs--was really interesting. I learned new words, like winze, a steeply inclined passageway connecting a mine working place with a lower one, and that the surfaces of a mine tunnel are called the back, ribs, and belly. This mine, when it is operational, gets three ounces of gold per ton of not-gold, whereas the strip-mines up by Yellowstone that use, or want to use, cyanide to separate the gold get sixteenths of an ounce per ton.
We panned for gold--the miner said that that a few times a year someone actually picks up a nugget--and I picked up some pretty rocks.
Friday night we paid Intern in cash and Tommy's Thai to have RDC2 for the evening while the four of us went to Adega. Sweet heaven, that was a fine and tasty meal. Well paced, well served, and most of all well cooked. Succulent, subtle, and fucking delicious. JHT didn't connect our having mentioned it when he saw its mention in the inflight magazine article, so he was pleased that we had already planned it.
Earlier in the week I couldn't lift RDC2's 85 pounds to my hip to dance with him as my mother danced with me--I needed him to stand on something so the lift was only horizontal not vertical. Sheesh. When I arrived at Intern's house, they were watching "Princess Bride" and he wanted to stay, somewhat to watch the end, only a few minutes away, but mostly because he was tired. His sleepiness gave my pride a reason to squat to lift him from the couch and carry him the block to the car, where I reassured him we had the movie at home.
JHT had lit on the fact that Intern is Mormon, and so asked, "Shouldn't they have been watching 'Princess Brides'?" We began--sorry, Intern--mercilessly to riff on that: Kramer vs. Kramers, Twelve Monkey Brides, Brides of Frankenstein, and my personal favorite (because it was the best as well as being my own), Seven Brides for One Brother.
Last night looking back on the floor over which we'd just taped resin (rosin?) paper, RDC said it was neater than he wraps my presents. My presents have that pesky third dimension.
After confirming the need or desire for it Friday on my way home from work, this morning I brought RDC2's leftover groceries to the nearby elementary school: an unopened gallon of cow milk, drinkable sugar-laced yogurt, and sugar-laden puddings, the latter two in ridiculous packaging. Tomorrow I will bring the juices, in unrecyclable boxes and bags, because everything at once was too much to manage on my bike.
In addition to the dairy stuff, I brought my clarinet. I have not touched it since eleventh grade, so I won't miss it--what I miss is any dedication to homemade music. The secretary expressed her thanks for the instrument, which the school needs badly. I hope they do enjoy it.
Ever since I can remember, I have dreamed about my period the night before it arrived. Especially when I was off the pill, this was a handy consideration my subconscious showed me.
Last night? No period dream, just a nightmarish, "Brazil" style melding of Black Hearts in Battersea and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Today at work? Thanks for nothing, brain! Better luck next time.
These days I am drinking out of Nalgeen sippy water bottles, since the hope is they get dirty more slowly than glasses. Blake recognizes it as a water vessel, and he is accustomed to asking me for a drink if I have forgotten his water dish. He pranced up to it and bowed, so I removed the top--a sipper in the screw-on cap with a half-dome meant to keep the sipper clean--and poured water into the half-dome from the bottle.
He eyed it and me and it and me again. This was Different and Strange. Finally he gave it a try, and ended up drinking quite a bit, drop by drop (and I drank the rest). And then he helped me pick out pencils to color on birthday cards. He really is the sweetest cutest boy.
The cabinets are in! They are gorgeous, of course. CabinetDude had installed most of them by the time I got home Monday but then realized everything on the north wall was 1.5" to the left of where it ought to be. He could move the two floor cabinets by himself but he needed his assistant to move the wall ones, so he finished up yesterday, moving the upper ones and installing the crown mouldings. The toe-kicks will wait until we finish the floors.
I opened them pet them and pulled open their drawers and yeah, it was well-nigh sexual.
They are so pretty. They have umpteen shelves, all adjustable, and I think several of the shelf boards will live in a remote upper cabinet because we need three, not four, shelves. One thing is now that we have tingle-worthy full-depth drawers instead of shelves in the lower cabinets, instead of only a half-shelf, there is no space tall enough for the three-gallon stockpot. Woe is me.
They are so pretty. They throw into sharp relief just how ugly the walls around them are, and not just the walls scarred from chipped-off tile but the main dingy gray ones too.
We should have painted the ceiling (and the walls) before they were installed. We can still paint the walls, carefully, but painting the ceiling over the cabinets to the point you cannot see any old ceiling paint behind the crown mouldings is going to be tricky.
The counter people measure today.