CLH's loves RDC's comment "You shouldn't anthropomorphize animals--they hate that" because she anthropomorphizes more than anyone she knows. I say that because probably everyone anthropomorphizes more than anyone else they know because only everyone is in their own head. That was confusing to write--and to read too I suspect.
Anyway, CLH was talking about how Kitty's facial expressions change, the tilt of ears, how the eyebrow and cheek whiskers are held, the angle of the head. That's all well and good, but can cats (and dogs) shift their facial fur hair by individual hair? Blake can change individual feathers on his face, it seems like. He can't moue his beak as a regular pet can its mouth, but he can move each bit of filoplume independently. His crest is his major indicator, but he can tweak his plumage with great precision and delicacy.
Also his feathers are long enough to get mussed, unlike cat and dog fur. (It's obvious my experience is with short-haired pets.) An eyebrow feather can hang over his eye like a fringe. His crest can be shoved to one side like--this is my invention--my father's comb-over in a stiff breeze.
And I know dogs and cats speak with their whole bodies, with their posture, when they need to, but a bird emotes with its whole body all the time, not just when it's awake and alert. If a dog is awoken, it'll open an eye and roll it around, and if it's startled maybe it'll jump up (my dog was not among the world's most active, obviously). But a bird--a cockatiel, anyway--will always use its whole body: the puffy, downy chick pose of dozing, with the feathers puffed up, the neck pulled in, the beak almost hidden by feathers; the guard-bird who has just seen a seagull on television and is sleek and slender; the scaredy-bird who has just seen The Exercise Ball or the Falcon at the Meta-Birdfeeder and looks like Alice when she's drunk the potion.
Okay, I have to go to work, but Blake is on my lap in the dining room, listening to his newly-returned daddy snoring in the bedroom, cuddling under my typing arm among folds of terrycloth bathrobe, poised for his after-breakfast nap, and I cannot bear to get up. I have to, and the beakless chick swee'b (I called Percy Swee' Pea, and Swee' B doesn't have the same ring but the swee must continue) will turn into the growling lion of Uwokemeupistan. Obviously, I prefer the former.
I see a shrink biweekly. Hi, my name's Lisa, I'm overindulged. Anyway, I started seeing her in October. Since March, she has made roughly every other appointment and canceled the others, or not canceled them, such that I show up at her office only to be told she's out. She has some sort of onging medical thing, or so I gather, because the first time was "a medical emergency," and when I said next time that I hoped it was okay, she said "It is being taken care of."
Every other appointment. She's made fourof my nine appointments since March.
Also, in late May she asked if I was getting anything out of therapy, because she's not sure. So now I'm second-guessing everything I said to her until then and since because I am clearly doing something wrong.
My sister took an instant, unmet dislike to her, one because you don't blow off your patients like that, and two because she should have known that to say something like that to be would make me nervous and insecure about the thing that's supposed to help me get over my nervous anxiety.
Also, her name is Dr. Hu.
I am not going to sack her--maybe because I am not so devoted to shrinkage that missing these appointments fucks me up, which would make both my sister and Shrink right. But I am glad of the Lexapro and I want to keep it.
RDC has said I seem more comfortable around people lately. My self-loathing has decreased, though I still eat garbage and don't exercise. I'm not beating myself up about stuff as much, and while I now have the impression that I did something wrong earlier this week, I can't remember what it was. That's a good thing, that I am not turning it over and over in my head and crippling myself with guilt.