Please let it only be that I am out of shape. Lately I have been getting headaches and I'm tired--now to the point that I sleep too much--and I am fairly sick of it. I attended a fairly dull tutorial today and noticed only a quarter of the way through that I was falling asleep. I must not do this. From somewhere or other I remembered that rubbing your earlobes is supposed to invigorate you. I put both amethysts in one ear and commenced work on the other, expecting to fall asleep over even this. I can understand Tina's fascination with the earlobe: it's so soft. Nobody's Fool, and in Enchanted Broccoli Forest, the author recommends the bread has been kneading enough when it's the consistency of an earlobe. Maybe she'd be a good baker.
Kal brought me whither she is house-sitting. Two dogs, two cats plus her own, a fish, and a green-wing macaw named Picasso.
Without Picasso's beloved human around, she deigned to accept affection from Kal and even some attention from me. I even got to do some wing-pit petting, so very soft and warm. Blake doesn't like his wingpits touched, and of course altogether is too small to stroke with the full hand, so this was a treat for me. Mostly I had a lap full of dog, which was great. And I still got to watch and listen to the parrot: dancing to various blues songs (mostly wobbling her neck like Tim Blake Nelson in "O Brother Where Art Thou"), or doing her Stevie Wonder imitation, ripping up blowcards (the parrot favorite, and an eye-popping illustration of the size difference between Blake's and Picasso's beaks), asking for cracker (anything that goes in the mouth is "cracker"), holding a strand of spaghetti in one reptilian claw and eating the whole thing without dropping it (about eight strands), and, whenever we were out of the room, calling for her human beloved (Kal's uncle) in a heart-rending, irresistible voice. You know how humans are genetically programmed to consider babies' cries unbearable? She figured out that sound.
The lapful of dog and everything else was lovely but I had to get home and snuggle my little buddy before bed.